SME Channels January 2012

PLUS

Dell Laser Printers to Manage Business Costs of SMBs /18

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ISSUE 11

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JANUARY 2012

SME TREND

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ERP

IBM: Giving Power Edge to SMEs

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SME BIZ

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Axis: Video Surveillance Enhances Business Efficiency

TREND SETTER

/36

VIA Gung Ho on Indian Tablet Market Growthr

POISED FOR

TAKE OFF ERP adoption among the SME segment has picked up momentum with increased awareness and availability of appropriate solutions. /26

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IBM Breaks U.S. Patent Record /08 www.smechannels.com

india’s first IT magazine for sme business VOLUME 02

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ISSUE 11

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JANUARY 2012

CASE STUDY

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SECURITY CORNER

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Tally: Mobile handset Distributor grows on Tally.ERP 9

/40

Check Point: People Should be Conscious about Multitude of Attacks

SME CHAT

/34

Cisco: “Small Businesses now view IT Investment as Strategic Decision”

MY EXPERIENCE EDITORIAL

A LOT OF HOPE AHEAD… SANJAY MOHAPATRA editor@smechannels.com

FIRST of all on behalf of SME Channels team, I would like to extend my greetings for 2012 to all our readers, well-wishers and partners and wish them a prosperous new year.

Like any other new year, from 2012 also we expect a good market growth but the fundamentals of macroeconomics is not in good shape. There is not stability in the crude oil price and for a long time dollar price is remained at a higher level. People are waiting to see when the dollar price will plummet. The import market is completely affected for several reasons: one obviously for dollar price rise and second shortage of hard drives in the market due to unnatural calamities in major manufacturing countries, although the outsourcing market has reported good numbers. But the next quarter or in the new contracts, the pricing will have a different picture. In this situation what is the prediction: the consumer is not much affected because they really do not understand the impact of rise and fall of the currency. To them, either oil price or inflection makes the trick. Although consumer market is one of the key drivers of Indian economy but for IT business, SMBs, enterprises, government and PSUs are important. In this situation Government and PSUs will also remain as the big buyers for this year although the process will be delayed in finalizing the deals. However, SMBs will again be bellwether in the space in terms of driving the business. There will be a lot of services as solution so the product movement will be slow but the bottom-line will be decent one. Channel market as a business may not grow while people adopting services as a business will have a great opportunity.

This will be a good year for acquiring good talent as job creation will be slow. Retail as a segment will again emerge fast as last year. LFRs and specialty stores will have a good growth so also more and more people will embrace online buying and from here on, online buying will enjoy greater trust. There will be a lot of innovation in the delivery mechanism. Company like flipcart.com has already shown the example.

Apart from this, there will be real convergence of devices. There will be huge growth in the tablet and smartphone market so also mobile content market. Enterprises will have intelligent measures to cut cost of operation. 3G/4G will impact the market to a great extent as there will be more remote and mobile workers this year than the previous year. So, prepare for the change and adapt to the change!

Looking forward to a great Year ahead!

IBall ClickScan IBALL CLICKSCAN offers extremely good experience with its quicker, easier, and portable scanning. Whether people are at home or at work, the scanner promises the best performance and lets them take the decision only in one second.

IBall ClickScan has 2 models available with A3 and A4 size scanning options. iBall Clicks can A4 supports max resolution of 2.0 mp whereas A3 size models supports max resolution of 5.0 mp and in this model A3, A4 and A5 size scanning can be done more precisely with adjustable height. A3 model also has built in 8 LED lights to have better scanning and capture even in low light conditions.

Both models support various picture formats including JPG, PDF, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIF, TGA, PCX, JP2, JPC, RAS, etc.

SPECIFICATIONS With the vertical projection it is nice and one of its kind. You do not need any paper to he turned off from the book or document pack.

FINAL WORDING As the office environment is becoming swanky, it is an addition to the same.

OVERALL RATING

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contents

JAN VOLUME 02 ISSUE 11

2012

ER COV RY STO

india’s first IT magazine for sme business

Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra Executive Editor: Smruti Chaudhury Copy Editor: Neil D’Souza Reporters: Neeta Israni, Aparajita Choudhury Web Designer: Vijay Bakshi Visualizer: Manas Ranjan Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary MARKETING Senior Manager: M Raj Executive- Marketing: Rajat Kumar Circulation and Printing: Panchanan Bhoi SALES CONTACTS Delhi 6/101, Kaushalya Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016 Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 9313891660 E-mail: raj@smechannels.com Bangalore Subrat S NO.661, 10th Main, 5th cross, 4th Block, Koramangala, Behind Old Maharaja, Bangalore-560034 Phone: 9886107294 Mumbai Hemal Shah B/14, Neel Ashish 92, J.P.road, Andheri (West) Mumbai - 400058 info@smechannels.com Kolkata S Subhendu BC-286, Laxmi Apartment, Kestopur

ERP Poised for Take Off

Kolkata-700101

ERP adoption among the SME segment has picked up momentum with increased awareness and availability of appropriate solutions.

Bangalore 136/ 9, Ground Floor, Eden Crest

/26

Phone: 9674804389 EDITORIAL OFFICE Delhi: 6/102, Kaushalya Park, New Delhi110016, Phone: 91-11-41055458 info@smechannels.com Apartment, Grape Garden, Ejipura Vivek Nagar PS Bengalore-560047 news@smechannels.com

SME CHAT Cisco /34 “Small Businesses now view IT Investment as Strategic Decision”

HP /42 “Desktop virtualization is next logical step”

SME BIZ

Axis Communications /44

Printed, Published and Owned by Sanjib

Video Surveillance Enhances Business Efficiency

Place of Publication: 6/101-102, Kaushalya

more inside Editorial~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 04

TREND SETTER VIA /36

Park, Hauz Khas New Delhi-110016

Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 41055458 Printed at Karan Printers, F-29/2, 1st floor, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-2, New Delhi 110020, India.

Partner Corner ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 24

All rights reserved. No part of this publica-

VIA Gung Ho on Indian Tablet Market Growth

Case Study~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 25

tion can be reproduced without the prior

SME Trends~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 38

written permission from the publisher.

FUJITSU /50

Security Corner~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 40, 46

Subscription: Rs.200 (12 issues)

Becoming Intelligently focused on Indian Market 6

Snippets~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 08

Mohapatra

Products~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 48

All payments favouring: Accent Info Media Pvt. Ltd.

SME CHANNELS JANUARY 2012

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SNIPPETS PRODUCT | CHANNEL | CONSULTING | SERVICES

for more log on to smechannels.com

HP Unveils Innovation center at IIIT-B for IPv6 and UC HP has signed a partnership agreement with the Government of Karnataka (GOK) and IIIT-Bangalore to conduct a pilot project that will help organizations in Karnataka through a smooth transition to

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).

The current version of IP addressing, IPv4, is reaching its theoretical maximum of about 4 billion internet addresses. IPv6 is the new internet addressing

protocol with the capacity to support 340 trillion addresses. This allows for the dramatic expansion of connected devices from computers and smart phones, to household electronics, industrial appliances,

sensors, vehicles and commercial systems. IPv6 also provides for improved quality and new applications like IP TV, telephony and ecommerce.

For enterprises in India, transitioning to IPv6 is essential to keep up with the current internet growth. The objective of the pilot project are to identify major challenges for organizations in adopting IPv6 develop solutions for these challenges through education, technology and process improvements and provide advice and resource for enterprises and government bodies in Karnataka.

As a part of the announcement, HP Network University also unveiled the Unified Communication & Collaboration (UC&C) Innovation Centre at IIIT-B. The HP Network University aims at providing advanced knowledge, including IPv6, to professionals working in the area of technology.

The university will showcase, under a single roof, a complete UC platform representing technologies from HP and its major UC technology partners.

Further, in this effort, HP has created ecosystem of technology vendors including, Avaya, AlcatelLucent, Check Point, Panduit, DSM Infocom, etc.

IBM Breaks U.S. Patent Record IBM has set a new U.S. patent record in 2011, marking the 19th consecutive year that the company has led the annual list of patent recipients. IBM inventors earned a record 6,180 U.S. patents in 2011, more than quadrupling Hewlett-Packard’s issuances and exceeding by six times those of Oracle/Sun. More than 8,000 IBMers residing in 46 different U.S. states and 36 countries are responsible for the company’s record-breaking 2011 patent tally.

More than 6,000 patents IBMers received in 2011 represent a range of inventions that enable new innovations and add significant value to the company’s products, services, including smarter solutions for retail, banking, healthcare, transportation and other industries. These patented inventions also span a wide range of computing technologies poised to support a new generation of more cognitive, intelligent and insight-driven systems, processes and infrastructures for smarter commerce, shopping, medicine, transportation, and more.

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SNIPPETS

Avaya Reaffirms Commitment to SMEs Avaya has unveiled Avaya IP Office 8.0—the new version of the company’s unified communications (UC) solution for SMEs. The new mobility application for Avaya IP Office 8.0—called one-X Mobile Preferred for IP Office— enables users to access a comprehensive set of unified communications capabilities on Android-compatible devices now, and on iPhone devices in early 2012. Key features of Avaya one-X Mobile Preferred for IP Office include multi-party conference management, integrated presence, instant messaging, geo-presence, etc.

Avaya’s new one-X Mobile Preferred for IP Office application builds on the previously-available Essential Mobility solution for IP Office, a solution that extends voice capabilities such as one number access and call control. Essential Mobility is currently supported on Symbian, Windows Mobile and iPhone devices (support for Android and BlackBerry devices available in first quarter of 2012).

Belkin Appoints SSK as RD for West Belkin India has appointed Shree Sant Kripa Appliances Pvt. Ltd. (SSK) as its regional distributor for West India for the company’s range of mobility products.

Under the terms of the agreement, SSK will distribute Belkin’s accessories designed especially for Samsung, along with Conserve Valet, range of Power Packs and overlays, to name a few. With the increasing popularity and acceptance of smartphones and tablets, this relationship will facilitate availability of Belkin products through a strong network.

“We are thrilled about the partnership with Shree Sant Kripa Appliances Pvt. Ltd. (SSK) whose excellent distribution network, broad distribution portfolio and strong knowledge of market dynamics, will definitely help us quickly achieve our goals in the West India market” said Mohit Anand, MD, India Sub Continent, Belkin Inc.

Data Infosys Scouting for Partners Data Infosys at the beginning of 2012 has come up with good news & great business opportunity for individuals and companies to become their product and services Franchise/Channel Partner anywhere in India. Data Infosys started its operations in 1999 and is currently India’s eighth largest Internet service provider. The company has opened the nominations and will offer after due selection on a very low Nominal Initial Investments for Just Rs.5 Lakhs. Franchise/Channel Partner can suggest this business opportunity to selected parties who can take care of the business in their district/area, appoint business associates /operator under them, take care of billing of the customers/associates, take care for Customer service provisioning/installations, take care of maintenance of his customers/associates, provide Data Infosys a minimum business guarantee and Sell Data Infosys services/Products/Solution.

The Franchise/Channel Partner can sell High Speed Broadband, dedicated premium Internet bandwidth, Business Email Solution, Web Hosting & Collocation, VOIP Solutions, Consultancy & Facility Management and Push Email & PIM Service. The Franchise/Channel Partner will get great returns – sell products & Service of the future – life-time business opportunity.

ZOTAC Unveiled

New ZBOX mini-PCs

ZOTAC has launched a trio of versatile 2nd-Generation ZBOX mini-PCs for all your computing needs at CES. The new ZBOX ID81, ID80 and AD04 series deliver outstanding energy-efficiency and stunning high-definition video playback in a compact form factor.

2nd-Generation ZBOX platform enhancements debuting with the ZBOX ID81, ID80 and AD04 series include an external WiFi antenna for superior wireless reception, integrated Bluetooth 3.0 technology and a bundled Media Remote with USB IR receiver for use with Microsoft Windows Media Center, XBMC and other popular media player applications.

Kingston ShowMY POINT

“Our efforts with Lenovo and Motorola Mobility will help to establish Intel processors in smartphones and provide a solid foundation from which to build in 2012 and into the future.”

PAUL OTELLINI

CEO & PRESIDENT, INTEL

cased HyperX Range at BYOC 2012

Kingston Technology has participated in the recently concluded BYOC 2012 – India’s largest gaming fest. Kingston’s special contribution to the event was sponsoring the exciting overclocking workshop where Kingston’s highperformance and excellent-quality HyperX RAMs and SSDs, whose target audience is overclockers, gamers, and PC enthusiasts, were showcased.

The gaming extravaganza, which was held from January 6 to 8 at Ambience Mall in Gurgaon, brought together over 1000 gamers from all over the country playing a variety of games for both the hardcore and casual gaming enthusiasts. The event also included seminars and lectures on subjects like careers in gaming and animation, essentials of a pro gamer and information about games that everyone needs to know. Kingston was proud to promote a special overclocking session conducted by some well informed overclockers from Eredov.com.

Kingston’s product display at the event included the wide range of HyperX RAMs including the HyperX Blu, T1 and Genesis lines.

In addition, Kingston also showcased the superfast, high-end Kingston HyperX SSDs.

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24online Conducts Road Show 24online’s road show highlighted its Journey from Local Networks to Global Platforms - for clients and partners consisting of 24online product & appliance ranges, and offering value-added solutions to their customers across ISPs, Wi-Fi & WiMAX Providers, Hoteliers, Hotspot Providers, Airports, Restaurants, Healthcare and Educational Institutes.

Samiksh Aggarwal, Asst. VP - Data Networks, 24online said, “24online’s Service Management Platform has made its mark across 45+ countries due to its specialized and unique offerings for each segments. With such a positive standing, this connect program serve as a valuable platform for us to attract new partners who see a goldmine of opportunity in the internet and hospitality industry, as well as consolidate our channel-centric approach for existing partners in terms of sales enablement, training and education, marketing and technical support.”

EMERSON NETWORK POWER ANNOUNCES BIG BANG DHAMAKA Emerson Network Power has brought delight to its Channel Partners with ‘Big Bang Dhamaka’ – a scheme to reward NSPs and VARs on New Year’s Eve. The scheme is applicable between 01 December 2011 and 31 January 2012 on achieving specified sales targets of UPS. All registered NSPs and VARs across India are eligible for rewards under the scheme. The sales targets have been evenly spaced so that any channel partner can easily qualify to win, and even climb to the next level to avail bigger prizes.

The minimum target has been set at Rs. 4 lakh worth of UPS sales during the scheme period.

Partners stand to win smartphones, laptops, LED TVs and lots of other exciting prizes depending on the achieved sales target.

Commenting on the offer, Ankesh Kumar, Director - Channel Products & Marketing at Emerson Network Power in India said, “The scheme is a New Year gift to our channel partners, and I would like to acknowledge their contribution to the immensely successful year we have had. We’ve made sure that there are rewards in store for partners of all sizes. I’m sure our partners would make the most of the scheme, and continue to outperform and expand our market share”.

Smartlink Kick Started Phase-II of its nexTech Smartlink Network has rolled out the phase II of its extensive seminar series - ‘nexTech 2011’ for its dealer and reseller community. In the first phase of the series, the event had visited 42 cities and in second phase will ultimately cover more than 120 cities across India. The Phase- I of oneday seminar which started from 17th August in Gurgaon and entered into the second phase from 6th December 2011, explores the journey of active networking industry for the future.

K. R Naik, Executive Chairman, Smartlink Network Systems, said, “Partner community plays a very crucial role in Smartlink Network’s ecosystem. ‘nexTech 2011’ our channel partner engagement program had been highly successful in its first phase. We are overwhelmed by the response we received from our channel partners; we look forward for the same response for Phase II. ‘nexTech 2011’ empowers our channel community by educating them with the latest trends and technologies that exist in the market.

GIGABYTE Announces Xmas & New Year Contest Gigabyte has announced the ‘Xmas and New Year Contest’, its latest overclocking competition run in conjunction with HWBOT.org.

The GIGABYTE ‘Xmas and New Year Contest’ is open to all Overclockers using any AMD APU on any GIGABYTE socket F1 A75 or A55 series motherboard, using any cooling solution. The contest winner will take home a GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD5 motherboard, with second and third place taking a GA-990FXA-UD3.

Giving you a valid reason to get down to some serious overclocking fun during this year’s festive season, the GIGABYTE ‘Xmas and New Year Contest’ will contain three cunning stages, each crafted to test your overclocking powers, while also giving you an excuse to avoid the in-laws.

This contest will run from December 15th 2011 with final score submissions until midnight on January 31st 2012.

Kaspersky Lab Wins Product of the Year Award Kaspersky Lab has been awarded “Product of the Year” by the respected independent testing laboratory AV-Comparatives based on overall test results from the year 2011. The award is based on the findings of nine different comparative tests of consumer anti-virus solutions conducted over the year, which in Kaspersky Lab’s case means two products - Kaspersky Anti-Virus and Kaspersky Internet Security. Significantly, Kaspersky Lab was the only participant to have been awarded the highest grade – Advanced+ – in all nine tests.

In deciding on the winner in the nomination of Product of the Year, AV-Comparatives’ experts evaluated solutions’ level of detection of malicious programs and effectiveness of heuristic algorithms, the number of false positives, resource usage, how well an infected system is treated, and effectiveness in “realworld” user scenarios. Each of these parameters was assessed objectively based on the results in the respective tests carried out during the year.

Consequently, for the third time in the history of the annual awards, Kaspersky Lab won Product of the Year.

Throughout 2011 Kaspersky Lab products participated in nine comparative tests of either anti-virus solutions or Internet security suites.

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Zebronics Launches Online Shopping

NETGEAR GENIE APPLICATION RECOGNIZED AT CES 2012

Top Notch Infotronix has introduced its online store - moneyvasool.com, an easy and convenient source for the Company’s vast line up of peripherals, accessories and consumer gadgets.

Moneyvasool.com is an eCommerce website offering a wide range of electronics items at valuefor-money prices. Standard online shopping features like secure transactions, trusted brands, product warranty, transit insurance and replacement if damaged in transit, and multiple payment options through credit cards, debit cards and gift vouchers are offered. Consumers can now browse and compare features of a range of Zebronics products as well as send their feedback. The website is simple and easy to navigate, and there are no hidden charges.

“As Zebronics continues to grow its brand and customer base, we believe it is important to have one place for our customers to find very best devices and accessories to match their lifestyle and needs. At moneyvasool.com, end-consumers will be able to get a complete and comprehensive brand experience with full catalogue and technical information available online,” said Rajesh Doshi, Director-Purchase & Marketing, Top Notch Infotronix.

NETGEAR has announced that it has been named an International CES Innovations 2012 Design and Engineering Awards Honouree for its NETGEAR Genie application. The NETGEAR Genie is a desktop application that runs on both PC and Mac providing a simple dashboard to monitor, control and repair home networks. The application is currently available at no cost for the WNDR3800 and WNDR4500 with additional routers to be included soon.

With its innovative Genie application, NETGEAR has effectively solved customer frustrations when they are unable to diagnose home networking issues. Genie puts all the necessary tools in a single application to keep networks running healthy. Genie automatically sends alerts when networking issues occur and with a click of a button, automatically diagnoses and repairs them, or helps the customer repair the problem. It is also an easy-to-use dashboard for launching additional NETGEAR applications including; Parental Controls, Broadband Usage Meter, Wi-Fi Channel Selection, Network MAP, USB Disk Printer Sharing, and more.

On this occasion, Atul Jain, Country Manager, India and SAARC, NETGEAR, said, “We are delighted that the NETGEAR Genie application has been honoured among some of the industry’s leading developers. NETGEAR has won accolades in the past for its high-performance, easy-to use networking hardware, however this is the first award in the software category. We are privileged to be in the company of some of the best and futuristic innovators in the technology industry”.

EXECUTIVE MOVEMENT

AFTER TWO QUARTERS OF POSITIVE GROWTH, WORLDWIDE PC SHIPMENTS TOTALED 92.2 MILLION UNITS IN THE FOURTH QUARTER OF 2011, A 1.4 PERCENT DECLINE PRELIMINARY WORLDWIDE PC VENDOR UNIT SHIPMENT ESTIMATES FOR 4Q11 (THOUSANDS OF UNITS)

HP retained its No. 1 position in the Q4 of 2011, despite a shipment decline of 16.2 percent year over year.

36,828

37,359

-1.4%

-16.2%

HP

Q4 2010

Dell

Acer Q4 2011

6,243

12,044

11,634

10,796

12,931

Lenovo

5,181

-18.4%

7.8%

9,823

23%

10,517

14,712

17,554

20.5%

Asus Growth

Others

Note: Data includes desk-based PCs, mobile PCs, including mini-notebooks but not media tablets such as the iPad. Source: Gartner (January 2012)

WORLDWIDE PC SHIPMENTS IN Q4 2011 DECLINED 1.4 PERCENT

Axis Communications gets Sudhindra Holla, as the new country manager for its Indian operations. Holla is an industry veteran with rich experience in building businesses and developing channels.

Samsung has appointed B D Park as the President and CEO of Samsung South West Asia Operations and Managing Director, Samsung India Electronics Ltd. Vivek K. Marla has joined CIBER’s executive team as its Senior Vice President and President CIBER India, CIBER’s primary global delivery center.

Gaurav Kanwal joins Adobe Systems as Head - Distribution Channels, South Asia.

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ZyXEL Honoured with Taiwan Excellence

DIGEST

ZyXEL’s Power line Series has been recognized as the winner of “2012 Taiwan Excellence”. Underscoring Taiwan’s advancement towards world-class standards in terms of product innovation, design, marketing and quality, “Taiwan Excellence” is the highest accolade given to products encompassing the “innovalue” spirit.

The awarded ZyXEL Power line products fully demonstrate ZyXEL’s competence in broadband networking technology, years of continuous evolution and the commitment to customers that promise to bring convenience and quality lifestyle enabled by modern Internet connectivity. Specifically designed for homeowners lacking the capability to wire the entire house for Internet connection, the easy-touse, plug-and-play Power line products allow users to start enjoying a variety of Internet applications instantly by converting home electricity grids into networks.

ESCANS MALWARE ALSO TALKS ABOUT FAKE ANTI-VIRUS

SERVICES TO BE MAJOR DRIVER Xerox India has revealed its 2012 growth strategy. As part of its Go-To-Market strategy for the year, the company has adopted a two pronged approach. While the company will continue to strengthen its technology and channels portfolio, it will also accelerate its services business with focus on the fast growing verticals of Banking, Insurance and Telecom. Vivek Chandel, Executive Director, Marketing, Xerox India, says, “We are also moving the Xerox India Innovation Hub from Chennai to a larger scale of operations in Bangalore alongside the ACS premises to drive higher impetus on innovation and research.”

He adds, “Services are the major driver of Xerox’s India strategy. We have in-house end-to-end capabilities to transform and optimize business process and document management value-chain.

Sectors like Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Telecom, Retail, Consumer Goods and IT/ ITES look very promising for our services growth. Xerox is the only player in the market that has the capability to streamline the entire value chain for its customers.”

ASUS Excites Gamers at CES 2012

eScan has conducted an in-depth research and come-up with a comprehensive report based on malware URLs collected. The report is a representation of the growing malicious mobile applications, fake facebook contests & promotions, holiday phishing scams, hotel ‘wrong transaction’ Malware emails and most importantly fake Anti-Virus softwares. Recent past also witnessed cybercriminals who had designed a new wave of malware targeted solely at Mac users. A year back, there were approximately 5000 pieces of malware code produced for Macs and with the passing year, this number is increasing at approximately 10 percent by the month. The report provides information on traditional techniques like SQL injection, web app hijacking & unauthorized server access, which will take a back seat.

TREND MICRO HIGHLIGHTS 12 THREAT PREDICTIONS Trend Micro researchers and analysts have been instrumental in uncovering various cybercriminal operations. In an effort to aid law enforcement authorities, they uncovered some popular FAKEAV affiliate networks and a particular SpyEye operation, which may bring authorities one step closer to catching the perpetrators. In 2011, the researchers witnessed an increase in the Android malware volume, more enhancements to notorious crimeware toolkits such as ZeuS and SpyEye, as well as the proliferation of survey scams in social media.

CSC EXPANDS ITS FOOT PRINT

ASUS has brought a comprehensive suite of products designed to enhance the gaming experience at CES 2012. These include the RT-N66U dual-band wireless gigabit router, EA-N66 dual-band wireless Ethernet wireless adapter, ROG Rampage IV Formula/ThunderFX motherboard and ROG Xonar Phoebus gaming soundcard set.

The RT-N66U dual-band gigabit wireless router delivers extreme network speeds and coverage for the best wireless gaming experience. It is effectively two routers in one, delivering combined wireless speeds of up to 900Mbps through double 450Mbps bands operating separately at 2.4GHz and 5GHz. It is aided by powerful 26dBm Wi-Fi amplifiers which extend its wireless range. In addition, ASUS’ new user friendly interface puts its powerful features within easy reach of everyone.

CSC has unveiled its 18th delivery center in India, and the second in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. The opening expands CSC’s footprint in the country and further enables the company to offer a wide range of services to its customers across the globe. The new state-of-the-art facility is equipped with world class infrastructure, network, and connectivity and will offer IT services to some of the largest insurance companies in the world. It will have a seating capacity of approximately 300, while the existing facility at Indore employs around 700 professionals.

Brian Manning, President and MD, CSC India, said: “Indore is a strategic location for us and we are happy to launch yet another facility here”.

Strontium Notches 30% of Memory Market

PANDALABS PREDICTS SOME SECURITY TRENDS OF 2012

At its sales conference held in Bangkok, Strontium revealed that the company has notched 30% of Indian PC memory market in year 2011. With share of almost one third of the Indian market, Strontium has the top spot among global vendors in Indian memory module market for 2011.

Strontium India’s Country Manager, Mr. Ajay Kogta, said “We have established ourselves as a leading memory module manufacturer. Presently we are enjoying around 30 per cent market share for memory modules in India. For us achieving leadership position is to continue to have this 30 per cent market share this year and for the years to come. Our strength has been our channel and our service standard and moving forward we will give all the support we can to our channel with marketing and schemes. We will continue to engage our channel and consumers by keeping competitive and honest prices.”

“In 2012 we will continue our focus on NAND Flash products like microSD cards, USB drives and SSD markets which have the potential for strong growth of around 20 per cent year-on-year. We will push for market share of 30 per cent in flash storage devices in 2012. We will also invest around Rs 10 crores to fund our flash products expansion plans” Ajay added.

PandaLabs declared that privacy violations and data theft will be the top security issues organizations need to focus on in the coming year. Cyber-espionage and social networking attacks will be the trends to watch, together with other, more traditional threats.

Cyber-espionage aimed at companies and government agencies will be as predominant as this year. From New Zealand to Canada, from Japan to the European Parliament, there have been countless attacks aimed at stealing secret or classified information.

In the case of home users, cyber-criminals will continue to target social media sites to steal personal data. Social engineering techniques exploiting users’ weaknesses have become the leading attack method for hackers.

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Dell Laser Printers to Manage Business Costs of SMBs

INTEL’S NEW ATOM PLATFORM

Hansa Research survey to understand the commercial laser printer options that could help SMBs optimize their TCO, highlights efficiencies of Dell laser printers in terms of speed and cost, thereby reiterating Dell’s claim of its commercial printers manage business costs, by reducing the total cost of operations.

Commenting on the report, Shishir Singh, Director – Product Marketing, CSMB, Dell India, stated, “At Dell, we are focused on helping businesses operate efficiently and making the most of their IT, so they can simplify day-to-day tasks, increase productivity, and focus on innovation. This study carried out by Hansa Research reiterates our commitment to serve SMBs with products that are best suited for them.”

He further added, “Our Laser printers help SMBs maximize their investment and achieve exceptional long term value”.

Kobian Strengthens its ViewCam Series

Intel launches new version of Atom processor codenamed ‘Cedar Trail’. Designed to provide small, compact, on-the-go computing with great battery life at an affordable price, the latest platform adds several new features to netbook computers made popular by students, families, and those looking for light productivity and Internet browsing. These devices will be available in early 2012 from major OEMs including: Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Toshiba.

The new design’s dedicated media engine enables full 1080p high-definition playback of videos and Blu-Ray content and includes additional digital display and output options including HDMI and DisplayPort. The integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3600/3650 combined with the integrated memory controller provides enhanced performance and system responsiveness, including an improvement in graphics performance up to 2X compared to the previous generation platform.

Systems based on the new Intel Atom processors may have up to 10 hours of battery life and weeks of standby, allowing for all-day use between charges. Additionally, Intel increased processor and overall system performance while reducing power consumption up to 20 per cent compared to the previous platform.

Based on Intel’s leading-edge 32nm process technology, Intel incorporated several new features into the platform such as Intel Wireless Display and Intel Wireless Music. With these new features and wireless enabled devices, people can share videos or photos wirelessly from their netbooks to a television, or stream music through their home stereo speakers.

Kobian has unveiled their latest models in the popular Mercury ViewCam series - VIZION, AQUA and GLAZE. These series offer a range from 10MP to 25MP and are priced between Rs 400 to Rs 2100.

Based on CMOS technology, real optics & autofocus features and with intelligent face tracking software, which can zoom in and track movements. It also has high powered 5 layered glass lenses and adjustable infrared controller. It displays clear smooth, full motion 30fps digital video streams with high speed USB 2.0 throughput at 480Mbps, making video conferencing a fun and easy way to keep in touch. It comes with a built-in microphone and 3D audio technology for live video chat.

“The product is a step ahead from its predecessors, we had launched the bright tangerine colored ViewCam, Tango,” said Sushmita Das, Country Manager-India, Kobian Pte Ltd.

Elecom starts Direct Operation Elecom has unveiled an‘Experience World’ Retail Showroom in Nehru Place, New Delhi indicating its direct presence in India. It has brought all lifestyle consumer products which individually suits one’s outfit and overall personality by adding 50 colours and characters to each product. The showroom covers approximately more than 200 sq.ft.

Inaugurating the outlet, Yutaka Yamamoto, MD, Elecom India Pvt. Ltd. Said, “It is just the beginning and we will go to most of the metro cities through a franchise model. And we will also be present in the large format retail chains. We will also invest substantial amount towards brand promotion of the products.”

Speaking to SME Channels, Manjul Agrawal, Director, Elecom India Private Limited said, “It is an 80/20 per cent partnership and we expect to grow very fast in this market. .”

STMicroelectronics to Maximize Speaker Output Power STMicroelectronics has introduced a high-performance, analog class-D audio amplifier with best-in-class power density. This achievement will allow equipment manufacturers to combine superior audio quality with a small form factor in next-generation home and professional sound systems and active-speaker applications. To maximize the speaker output power, sound-system manufacturers require high-efficiency amplifiers capable of driving speakers at low impedances of 2 or 3 ohms, which creates a challenge by increasing device sizes. ST designers have addressed this problem by managing to pack 320W of total output power – 160W on each channel - on an area of 100 mm2, giving ST’s newest analog audio class-D amplifier a 20% power-density advantage over existing solutions on the market.

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SNIPPETS

Canon Launches New Models of Cameras Canon has launched three compact cameras, two in its IXUS range and one in the Power Shot series, making use of the latest technologies to capture astoundingly vivid images with little effort from users.

The compact Canon 14.3 megapixel PowerShot G1X adopts powerful EOS technologies and large CMOS sensor to capture amazingly high-quality photos, for those who desire the power of an EOS camera in a smaller package. Whereas the outgoing and socially active users can look forward to the new 16.1 megapixel IXUS 125 HS and 10.1 megapixel IXUS 500 HS, which have the ability to take outstanding photos without the use of clunky accessories, while still being stylishly slim enough to slip into a tight pocket.

The new range of compact cameras features DIGIC 5 image processor. The DIGIC 5’s superior image processing capabilities generate high quality images in all types of lighting conditions, with minimal noise and more accurate colors, ensuring the best-looking skin tones under any type of light.

PNY LAUNCHES BRICK ATTACHÉ USB FLASH DRIVE PNY launches the new Brick Attaché USB Flash drive. This drive sports a unique, playful and fun building block design of children’s toys, steering away from the traditional serious designs associated with USB flash drives.

PNY’s new Brick Attaché drive is made of strong non-slip polymer material with a dotted embossed texture. The dark blue body has a wedge-shaped notch at the end far from the white cap, while the cap has a similar shaped protrusion, which fits snugly in this notch. This prevents the cap from getting lost. Additionally, if you have more than one such drives, you can connect them one after another forming a train or any such imaginary object according to your creativity.

The Brick Attaché is a tiny 6.6 g drive just 37.3 mm long, 18.3 mm wide and 9.3 mm tall, lending it extraordinary portability. Further, with warranty of 5 years, the USB flash drives are available at a price range between INR375 to INR1300 for 2GB to 16GB capacities.

THECUS unveils 1U Storage Server for SMB’s Thecus Technology has launched 1U4500 - a Ultra-high Performance 1U Storage Server - for the SMB market. The family of RAID enabled network attached storage is available in four-bay hot swappable network attached storage with enhanced system performance for storage computing. The storage server is optimised to deliver multilingual support and in addition with the quick RAID feature one doesn’t have to wait several hours before one using it for the first

time as RAID is built within a snap of a finger.

With SATA II hard drives and eSATA connection for easy expansion, Thecus 1U4500 can fulfill the needs of most SMBs which are looking for more storage space on their network. Its SATA II drive bays give the 1U4500 up to 8TB of storage capacity and offers RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 and JBOD Support.

Further, it is priced at INR 79,900/- and available with M. B. Solution (P) Ltd.

Novell Launches ZENworks Application Virtualization 9 Novell launches ZENworks Application Virtualization 9. This latest release leverages a unique approach to application harvesting that enables enterprise IT staff to tap into a library of trusted resources and find the best stored version to build the necessary virtual application dynamically. By harvesting work that has already been done, IT users can scan a target endpoint and quickly build a set of needed virtual applications, saving time and ensuring quality.

ZENworks Application Virtualization 9 includes access to a large number of pre-built templates for building virtual applications based upon tested and optimized application configurations. These Webbased templates provide IT administrators with access to a central repository that includes the most up-to-date versions of common applications.

AVerMedia Offers HD Recorder for Video Games AVerMedia Technologies has introduced the Game Capture HD, a standalone 1080i capture box for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. It guarantees a prompt and robust HD video capture ability to preserve your splendid video gameplays in 1080i. You don’t need to set up a PC beside your game boxes. The Game Capture HD can handle the whole HD gameplay recording task independently of PC. The installation is easy. By connecting Game Capture HD with your video game console via the accompanying Universal Component Cable, your HD video gameplay recorder is ready. The HD gameplay recording is now one-click away! The Game Capture HD will be soon available in this fall.

The Game Capture HD possesses an advanced H.264 hardware compression technology. It can achieve the delicate high definition video in the most HDD-efficient way. The on-screen display provides you the comprehensive recording information without interfering your gameplay.

AVerMedia has overcome the time difference between live gameplay and the video compressed by the Game Capture HD. You will not feel the latency in your games while the on-screen display mode is on. Besides, you can take a screenshot during gaming or video playback.

QNAP launches New V3.6 Beta NAS Management Software QNAP Systems launches new V3.6 beta NAS management software for its Turbo NAS series, providing highly anticipated features such as VPN Server, LDAP Server, and Proxy Server, cloud music and photo sharing with a web browser, enhanced backup features, and more. Firmware V3.6 beta also includes new version of MyCloudNAS 1.2, QPKG center and more compatible IP camera.

Firmware V3.6 beta provides several new business-class features. The VPN Server offers the businesses with a cost-saving way to create a secure and private network. The LDAP Server simplifies mass account management and saves business’ IT hardware expenditure. The Proxy Server provided with the “Squid” QPKG provides the IT administrator a great solution to manage network loading yet maintain network security.

“Firmware V3.6 beta proves the Turbo NAS firmware is business-ready,” commented Jason Hsu.

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SNIPPETS

IBM Becomes No.1 in Server Market IBM has emerged as No. 1 in the India non x86 UNIX server market in revenue terms in the third quarter (Q3) of 2011, according to IDC’s Asia/Pacific Quarterly Enterprise Server Tracker, Q3 2011, released in early December.

IBM’s success in the Non-x86 Unix market segment in India was underpinned by strong uptake for Power7 servers.

In addition, IBM’s non x86 UNIX server revenues grew 7.2% based on the performance in the first three quarters of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010, while revenues of all other vendors in the said segment declined during the same period.

Other IBM highlights from the IDC report include: • Overall server market: IBM captured 29.8% revenue share of the overall server market in Q3 2011, with 8.2% year on year growth. The overall server market in India grew 12.6% in revenue terms in Q3 2011 compared to Q3 2010.

• x86 Server market: IBM had a 25.3% revenue market share of the x86 server market in Q3 2011.

• x86 Blade server market : IBM captured 22.2% revenue share of the x86 blade server market in India in Q3 2011.

Sify Technologies Launches Sify mystorage

HP STRENGTHENS ENTERPRISE CLOUD SERVICES HP adds a new release of its Enterprise Cloud Services that enhance the performance of mission-critical applications while meeting the changing demands and workloads of enterprise clients.

The new HP Proof of Concept program enables clients to experience Enterprise Cloud Services—Compute capabilities via a short-term trial run. During the trial period, clients can run applications through HP’s cloud computing infrastructure to experience these services as they would be used in their production systems. With support from a team of dedicated HP engineers, clients can provision servers or configure virtual machines via portal access then evaluate capabilities, test features and develop strategies for deployment of core applications to the service.

“Organizations need to rapidly innovate to better serve their customers, while improving operational efficiency,” said Marshal Correia, director, Enterprise Services, HP India. “HP Enterprise Cloud Services—Compute delivers a flexible and agile IT infrastructure that provides our clients with the capabilities they need to create competitive advantage in the market.”

Delivered by HP Enterprise Services’ global data centers, Enterprise Cloud Services—Compute clients pay only for the services they need to run core applications and processes. Running on an HP Converged Infrastructure, the service combines server, storage and network resources, enabling clients to flexibly secure technology resources without the capital investment or burden of procurement and installation.

Sify technologies have recently launched Sify mystorage, a cloud-based online storage and backup solution targeted at Consumers and Small Businesses. Sify mystorage enables users to insure critical files—documents, mail, photos, videos, music, etc.—in the computer against everyday risks like virus attacks, file corruption, accidental deletion or a PC crash. Sify mystorage automatically and continuously backs up and stores the users’ files in a secure cloud thus providing foolproof protection against data loss.

To cater to the different storage needs of Consumers, SOHOs and SMBs, Sify mystorage service is available in a wide range of prepaid plans, starting as low as Rs.175/- per month for 10 GB storage. Users can effortlessly renew plans or upgrade their current plans to higher storage, online.

Buffalo Extends Warranty on Networking Products

Om Nanotech Becomes Best Exporter

Buffalo Technology has announced the latest extended warranty period for all the wireless networking solutions, increasing the warranty period from two to three years. All Wired and Wireless networking products manufactured or purchased on or after April 1st 2011 will be available with a new three-year warranty.

Buffalo’s family of wireless networking solutions includes a lineup of class-leading Wireless-N routers, client adapters and extended range antennas. Designed to IEEE802.11n standard specifications, these solutions offer single band transfer rates from 150 to 450 Mbps and concurrent 300 Mbps on dual band solutions for a combined total of up to 600 Mbps; great for Web surfing, HD multimedia streaming, gaming and more.

Om Nanotech has been conferred with Best Exporter and Highest Exporter award at a recently held function by Ministry of Commerce, Government of India at Noida.

The Chief Guests of the event were Anoop K. Pujari, IAS, Director General of Foreign Trade, Satyananda Mishra, IAS (Retd), Chief Information Commissioner, S.C Panda, IAS, Development Commissioner, Noida Special Economic Zone and C.P.S Bakshi, IRS, Joint Development Commissioner.

Speaking on the occasion, Atul Khosla, Director, Om Nanotech Pvt. Ltd. said, “We are delighted to receive this prestigious award in export segment.

Being acknowledged for our efforts gives a great feeling. This gives us impetus to work harder in future.”

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PARTNER CORNER

WE WILL FLY THE TALLY FLAG HIGH ALWAYS “We feel satisfied when we do something which helps our customers to grow. We feel proud when people say- Think Tally. Think Priyam,” DHIRAJ VIJAYVARGIA, MANAGING DIRECTOR, PRIYAM INFOSYSTEMS PVT. LTD., JAIPUR

B

orn to a modest family in Jaipur, Dhiraj Vijayvargia had never imagined becoming a successful entrepreneur, had not he come across Tally. After completing his Post Graduation in commerce and computers, he had pursued his career with a Jaipur-based software development company. Here, he was competing with Tally in the market place. Dhiraj added, “I knew that Tally is a world-class product and it was quite popular in the country. Although my earlier company used to compete with Tally, I was a fan of Tally that time itself.”

After serving that company for almost 8 years - till 2002, Dhiraj started his own business named Priyam Infosystems Private Limited, which was into providing software solutions to the enterprises but Tally was always in his mind. All of a sudden, one good day, he saw Tally advertisement in the newspaper and coincidentally, he had to recommend Tally to one of his customers.

He therefore called up one of the distributors of Tally and very next day, the distributor along with one of Tally’s employees named Nitin Garg came along. The way he took the demonstration of Tally, it impressed Nitin and he proposed Dhiraj to be a Tally partner. Dhiraj then submitted all his profile and after three weeks, he got a call from Deepak D Prakash of Delhi RO that he was looking for a partner like him - young but having good exposure in the industry. Dhiraj probabaly was looking for this opportunity and acceded to the suggestion. This is how his journey with Tally started.

After a short time, Parakram was launched by Tally. Priyam Infosystems then participated very aggressively and received tremendous support and

focus from Tally. In 2005-2006, Priyam bagged a good order from National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) order. NRHM started from Rajasthan to spread across the country. Here Priyam had done some amount of customization too as they had already started TDL. Besides, the company has also bagged orders from Rajasthan State Seeds Corporation and Rajasthan Roadways.

After his association with Tally there was no looking back. Dhiraj maintains, “It was altogether different experience though early days –there were advantage and challenges of selling BIG Brand and Tally used to be treated as an expensive software products. We were new to Tally business but Tally’s continuous technology shift (hardware lock to soft lock, email based activations, Statutory compliance etc.) and focused approach kept us energized and on the toes. There were pressure of performance, growth and recognition in the Team. We traveled across Rajasthan, Increased team size, enhancement of technology, Infrastructure development etc. During those days only my wife –Preeti also started helping me to build an organization.”

Started from 2 people, today, the company has 19 people, 8500+customers and about 230 + active partners. Priyam’s turnover has touched Rs.3 crores today from Rs.22 lakh first year. They are expecting grow at least 100% year on year now.

“We feel satisfied when we do something which helps our customers to grow. We feel proud when people say- Think Tally. Think Priyam,” adds Dhiraj. “Smart Tally - a customized add on tool on Tally platform is also achievement of our team.

My learning from my old company helped me a lot in life cycle of any software development.”

Since his background is software development, it was more interesting for him to influence the partners to use Tally. He used to interact with the partners and understand their requirements and design a few small sized applications and TDL Tools. Priyam also has developed its own product called SMART Tally. It is a bundle of 36 different small add on tools. The company has 9 modules at TallyShop at present and working for few more to launch soon. Priyam also has influenced nearly 10-15% of its customer base to use add-ons from TallyShop. They have also developed a module for education segment called Priyam Tally Excellence Centre.

A contented man, Dhiraj says, “While working with Tally, time flew. It is really enjoyable working with Tally Solutions.” Asked about his experience with Tally, He added, “Tally is one of the best thing happened in India for Indian economy to make businessman’s life easy. It’s a great company with great team leader Bharat Sir. Tally is a wonderful company to work with from all angles. This company has high values, ethics, policies, Passion and transparency. This company has everything to be a world class company - a company where customer comes first.”

Finally…

As per Dhiraj, personally, Tally culture has changed his life. He has have become better human being. He concludes: “Thanks to God that I’m part of Tally Family. As Bharat Goenka sir says-Tally has its own destiny. We have to only maintain it. My association with Tally is very close to my heart. We will fly the Tally Flag high always.”

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TALLY

CASE STUDY

MOBILE HANDSET DISTRIBUTOR GROWS ON TALLY.ERP 9 DILIP KALRA MD, DELTA PRIME MARKETING PVT. LTD.

D

elta Prime Marketing Pvt. Ltd. is one of the premium distributors of Spice Mobile across India. The reason being they contribute almost 20% of Spice Mobile business in India. By virtue of its size, Delta is one of the biggest mobile distributors in Rajasthan also.

Based out of Jaipur, Delta started its operation way back in July 2005 as a small multi-brand mobile handsets distributor.

But after one year, the company became exclusive partner for Spice Mobile for the entire region (Rajasthan) with a very small number of 5000 units’ commitment but today the company is selling an excess of 1.2 lakh units of handsets. Besides, the company has also expanded this engagement of Spice to Gujarat by opening a branch office in this state in February 2011. Their revenue is expected to touch Rs.300 crores this year out of which the state of Rajasthan will contribute Rs.250 crores and Gujarat will contribute Rs.50 crores.

Mr.Dilip Kalra, MD, Delta Prime Marketing Pvt. Ltd., says, “We are exclusive distributor for Spice Mobile and it is a bigger cake. We started with so many other brands including Tata, Reliance, Bird, Alcatel, Samsung, etc., but it was for a short span. We have a very big channel in Rajasthan. I have 60 micro distributors who are exclusive for me and there is a loyalty and bonding with them.”

In order to manage his business Mr. Kalra had implemented Tally solution from the beginning. It was Tally 7.2 at that point of time. Now, obviously, he has upgraded it to Tally.ERP 9.

“To be very honest, Tally is the ideal solution for accounting purpose. Every beginner entrepreneur should go for Tally.

There are so many other software avail-

“We like to control our systems from a remote access as we like to see our balance sheet, RoI, etc. Tally.ERP 9 helps us immensely in that way,”

CONTACT Tally Solutions Pvt. Ltd. AMR Tech Park II, No. 23 & 24, Hongasandra, Hosur Main Road, Bangalore – 560 068.

India.Tel +91 80 66282559; Fax +91 80 30228775; www. tallysolutions.com

BENEFITS l ideal solution

for accounting purpose l Every beginner entrepreneur should go for Tally

able in India but I think Tally is the easiest solution for the entrepreneurs. A lay man can use it. I suggested all of my channel partners to have Tally in their systems. We like to control our systems from a remote access monitoring our balance sheet, RoI, etc. Tally.ERP 9 helps us immensely in that way,” said, Mr. Kalra.

Recalling his initial experience with Tally software, he added, “When we implemented Tally, I called up Mr. Dhiraj Vijayvargia, Director, Priyam Infosystems, the Master Tally Partner and my good friend, to help us implement. It took us only one week to set up the entire system.

I knew he had a good hold on this market.

After implementation, from time to time, he supports me and helps me in upgrading the system. For example, I needed

personalized solutions. I was facing some problem in inventory management and he gave me solutions i.e. Narration Searching & Smart Tally. He is very particular in supporting me in those areas.”

After opening branch in Gujarat, Delta Prime synchs data every day back and forth from Gujarat BO to Rajstan HO and Tally is helping them to do so with ease.

Mr. Kalra said, “Fortunately with the help of Tally.ERP 9, it is easy to file our returns including VAT, service tax and other Govt. taxes. I am completely satisfied with Tally. My channel partner Priyam Inforsystems -is really helpful. He keeps me updating about the issues and up-grade the system accordingly. He has a very professional team. I really appreciate that.”

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COVER STORY

ERP

ERP

POISED FOR

TAKE OFF ERP adoption among the SME segment has picked up momentum with increased awareness and availability of appropriate solutions.

BY SANJAY MOHAPATRA sanjay@smechannels.com

T

he ERP market in India is fairly mature, comprising approximately 35% of the enterprise application revenue. Although other enterprise applications have started becoming popular in India, ERP continues to comprise a third of the enterprise applications market. This growth, in large part, is being sustained and abated by the increasing adoption of ERP amongst the small and medium segment.

The micro, small and medium segment in India plays a crucial role in the Indian economy.

According to the Economic Survey of India 200910, the segment contributes to about 8% of India’s GDP, 45% to India’s manufacturing output and about 40% of India’s exports. In terms of employment generation also, this segment accounts for nearly 50-60% in all developing and emerging nations, according to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.

“India has the second largest number of SMEs in the world, but the segment spends only 30% of the total IT spending. Global competition is driving increased IT adoption by SMEs, and this provides a huge potential for increase in IT spend

among the SME sector in India,” says Sukumar R, Vice President, Ramco OnDemand ERP. The SME segment has come to the forefront in the last few years in India due to several reasons: government’s thrust to the segment, increasing business opportunities in a robust economy, domestic demand, opportunities through globalization, rise of tier-two and –three towns and cities, and the momentum evident in entrepreneurial ventures.

According to Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), the SME sector is growing at a rate of 35% per annum, and 60% of SMBs are moving towards a technology-based infrastructure to increase their productivity and reduce input cost. Yet accessing technology and maintaining competitiveness continues to be a challenge among SMEs. Technology spend in this segment has largely been restricted to investments in hardware with little or nominal investment in software. Application adoption has been restricted to accounting software and payroll with hardly any demand for human resources management. Moreover these applications are mostly point solutions or

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ERP

COVER STORY

“ACCORDING TO RESEARCH FIRM IDC, SAP HOLDS 27% MARKET SHARE IN THE SME SEGMENT.”

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COVER STORY

ERP

“WE WILL ALSO ADD MORE PARTNERS IN THE FUTURE TO INCREASE OUR REACH AND CATER TO THE GROWING DEMAND SPECIFICALLY IN SME SEGMENT.” SUKUMAR R, VICE PRESIDENT, RAMCO ONDEMAND ERP

stand alone applications, making it difficult for comprehensive automation of enterprise systems.

Application penetration has been minimal for a variety of reasons such as lack of awareness and understanding about the benefits of deployment, and also the fragmented nature of the segment.

SMEs are now using technology as a growth driver, allowing IT to focus on strategic growth of their businesses.

There is increasing awareness and understanding about technology adoption, and the benefits it can bring to business operations. The increasing competitiveness in the external business environment, as well as enhanced vendor activities related to market building has contributed to the momentum in the market.

In the recent past, SMEs have realized that comprehensive technology adoption is important for their businesses. For example, Nagpur-based Facor Steels is a carbon, alloy, stainless, and specialist steel manufacturer. To meet the challenges of an expanding production plant and product range, the company needed an integrated ERP system. In April 2009, the company engaged Oracle Partner Sonata Software Technology to implement Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 Oracle Financials, Oracle Process Manufacturing, Oracle Order Management, and Oracle Purchasing. It helped the company to track inventory and reduced the time taken to record and integrate information from weeks to just seven days, increasing staff productivity and efficiency.

As the business and industry has steadily grown, so has competitiveness, which has necessitated increasing use of information technologies to drive a business, manage and operate operations, enhance competitiveness and achieve higher efficiency. Therefore, SMEs have started implementing integrated business management solutions to make their organizations dynamic and responsive to the ever changing business and economic environment.

Today’s small businesses are increasingly using technology for business advantage and competitiveness. It was not so in the distant past that ERP

was considered an expensive proposition. But increasingly companies are adopting full fledged ERP solutions. Roca India, the sanitary ware and tiles manufacturer, deployed SAP’s ERP ECC 6.0.enhancing internal processes across planning and demand management, sales management, finance management, procurement and production management and plant maintenance solutions.

The rapidly changing external environment with increased globalization, which provides relatively more opportunities for growth, has contributed hugely to market momentum. This requires robust technology systems and processes

“THROUGH OUR SOLUTION WE HAVE BROUGHT A TAILORED EXPERIENCE TO SMES, WHICH HELP ORGANIZATIONS TO INITIATE EFFECTIVE CHANGE MANAGEMENT.” SUBHOMOY SENGUPTA, GROUP DIRECTOR OF MICROSOFT DYNAMICS INDIA.

to facilitate rapid expansion, agility and scalability.

Also businesses have become seamless with the rapid maturing of Internet-based technologies, enabling start-ups and small businesses to run viable businesses, even from remote locations.

Asheesh Pandia, Brand Management and Corproate Communications Consultant, says, “Lots of small medium companies are either considering or already implementing ERP and that has opened up great new dimensions and phenomenal opportunities for consulting companies as well to reach out for SMEs and provide their solutions.”

The Market The ERP market has traditionally been dominated

by SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. However, there are a number of other players in the market such as Ramco, Infosys, Sage, Tally, ESS and Busy as well as pure play cloud-based ERP service providers such as Netsuite. All players have varying penetration in the SME segment, with some vendors such as Microsoft and SAP chiselling their SME forays with exclusive partnerships and marketing programmes. These activities have helped build market awareness and understanding about technology in general and ERP in particular.

Microsoft Dynamics has various offerings that are specially designed for the SME segment.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is an integrated business management solution designed for tech savvy SMEs. The solutions are uniquely designed to be flexible with vertical functionalities, specifically for the small- and mid-market companies.

Microsoft has been working closely with solution partners, targeting specific verticals and geo clusters. The aim is to ensure that the solutions help SMEs become self-reliant in managing and maintaining ERP deployments through simple and easy tools.

SAP has two sets of offerings specifically designed for the SME segment: SAP Business One and Business ByDesign, an on-demand offering.

While the former solution has been around for a while, Business ByDesign has been a relatively recent addition. SAP Business One is offered as an on-premise or hosted business management solution that is easy-to-use, flexible and affordable for SME subsidiaries. SAP has tied up with key solution partners such as Wipro, TCS, ITC Infotech to take both these offerings to the SME market in India.

SAP has more than 3,500 SME customers, which account for over 77 % of the total customer base in India. Globally, more than 75% of SAP’s total customer base is SME companies. According to research firm IDC, SAP holds 27% market share in the SME segment.

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COVER STORY

ERP

“THE COMPLEXITIES OF A GROWING BUSINESS SHOULD BE ADDRESSED IN THE SYSTEM AS AND WHEN REQUIRED.” SHOAIB AHMED, PRESIDENT, TALLY SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD.

Tally has been a major player in the Indian SME market for long time, starting with its accounting software. It has slowly expanded its offering by adding modules making it a comprehensive ERP suite. Tally’s ERP offering, Tally ERP 9, is specifically designed for the SME segment and covers from bill to balance sheet. It offers accounting, inventory, payroll, tax filing, purchase management, billing, manufacturing, job-work and branch management. Keeping SME requirements in mind, the Tally ERP deployment has been designed for ease-of-use and management that does not require specialized skill sets.

Sage offers an integrated suite of ERP and CRM. The Sage Accpac ERP as a product has been in the market for more than 30 years with more than 60,000 customers globally. It is one of the most stable products available for the growing SMB market in India. In the last seven years of operations in India, partners have developed vertical products across all segments. Sage Software has a keen understanding of the requirements of the SME segment and has focused on providing quick implementation as a business differentiator.

With the advent of cloud computing, businesses which hitherto could not afford an ERP have started investing in the software. Ramco OnDemand ERP (RODE) is a full-fledged ERP delivered on the public cloud. Designed and developed to suit a wide spectrum of growing ERP needs, RODE offers multiple benefits such as flexibility, scalability, simplicity and speed.

RODE helps enterprises to focus on core business by enabling accelerated software deployment with reduced risk, lower total cost of ownership, without the need to invest in additional infrastructure or investments, guaranteed higher ROI, and greater agility to scale. RODE also offers very powerful analytics that help organizations take informed business decisions.

Recently, the company added Ramco OnDemand Gateway products which enables customers to adopt business applications quickly and easily, and then graduate to a full-fledged ERP. Gateway products offer a fusion of transaction and decision support systems (i.e. ERP with self-contained

analytics), thereby supporting both operations and decision-making. This will help a lot of micro, small and medium businesses harness the power of cloud and graduate to a full-fledged ERP as the businesses grow.

From a product functionality point of view, RODE is as powerful as any other on premise ERP. RODE offers similar benefits like any other on premise ERP without the complexity, cost and huge implementation time. Since the product is completely modular, it enables customers to choose the functionalities they need, and pay only for what is used, on a subscription basis. The product is also completely scalable, and organizations can seamlessly upgrade their usage with newer functionalities based on the speed of growth.

“Microsoft Dynamics has 2,000 customers across industry verticals, and is a preferred solution provider for SMEs as it is simple and convenient to use. It also streamlines well with existing Microsoft products, minimizing the training time and accelerating productivity. Through our solution we have brought a tailored experience to SMEs, which help organizations to initiate effective change management,” says Subhomoy Sengupta, Group Director of Microsoft Dynamics India.

Microsoft entry-level solutions have been installed by small organizations to streamline their day-to- day processes, and thereby increasing their cost efficiencies. One of the requirements that are distinct among the SME segment is that ERP deployment has to be quick and hassle free.

Microsoft tries to approximate to this condition by making its ERP solution easy-to-use, and at the same time ensure that it protects existing investments and delivers long-term business value by working with existing IT systems.

Microsoft Dynamics ERP solution also enables increased agility, so that organizations can adapt quickly to the business solutions, connect more easily with customers, and optimize supply chains. It also enables enterprises to streamline day-to-day processes maximizing profits. Today, a lot of SMEs are successfully using ERP solutions in industries like manufacturing, leather, realestate, etc.

Tally is unique in that the moment it is installed, one can start using the software for core business requirements. An added advantage is that customers can buy advanced capabilities in an incremental manner seamlessly, without requiring to redo transactions. Customers can buy value added modules from an online marketplace, called Tally Shop and the add-on module is streamed, installed and configured instantly at the customer’s computer.

Tally shop – an online marketplace for a customer to buy value added modules. An add-on is streamed instantly and installed, configured, licensed to the customer’s computer with just a click. Customers can evaluate it for few days before buying it, and get a look and feel of the module by referring the screen shots, presentation, and user manual. Tally shop caters to customers across the country, making their ERP experience all the more fulfilling.

Another business differentiator of Tally Software is that it provides upgrades, patches and OS changes in a seamless manner, taking care to ensure minimal disruption of the customer’s operations.

“It is important for SMEs to have all the business functionalities built into the application.

However a smaller enterprise will not have the maturity of its business process, unlike a large company. Hence while it is important to provide all the functional capabilities, it is important to ensure that the system is simple. The complexities of a growing business should be addressed in the system as and when required,” says Shoaib Ahmed, President, Tally Solutions Pvt. Ltd. ESS has had an ERP offering targeted at the SME segment for a long time. It has been among the early players to develop an offering specifically for the SME segment. “Over the years, we have addressed the needs of Indian SMEs, and we were the first ones to roll out an effective ERP based on robust technology with a clear growth road map.

The vast majority of our clients are from the SME segment,” says Sanjay Agarwala, Managing Director, Eastern Software Systems.

ESS believes that the needs of a small company are distinct from those of a large corporation and hence an ERP has to be designed specifically to meet specific requirements. ESS emphasizes that SMEs are looking for complete solutions for their needs, which meet all the requirements of process automation as well as book keeping, and a stripped down solution does not meet this criteria at all.

It is a common belief that SMEs run simple businesses, and hence can be given a stripped down ERP. “This approach is flawed, as it is like first designing a jumbo jet and then taking out

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one engine to reduce the costs. The solution has to be architected correctly to work successfully.

Of course, an SME cannot be as complex as the working of a billion dollar corporation, but stripping down a solution which works for a billion dollar company and then offering it to 2 million dollar company can hardly be the “right sized” solution,” says Agarwala.

Challenges of ERP adoption

by SMEs ERP implementation is tough and challenging even for the most aware and prepared organization. The challenges for the SME segment is even more amplified, given the fact that there is a scarcity of IT resources to identify needs, source, implement, ensure adoption and then maintain it. However, the most significant challenge among SMEs is the lack of awareness and understanding about the benefits of ERP adoption.

Selecting the right vendor and the appropriate solution is a very significant step in ERP adoption.

The lack of trained resources to help the organization identify the right product and vendor is a major challenge. “IT requirements are never organized or easily available. There is a scarcity of trained IT resources among SME as they are expensive as compared to large organizations that can maintain large IT departments,” says Debajit Roy, CEO, WoodApple UnikSolutionz.

This sentiment is echoed by Dheeraj Juneja, CEO and Founder, Loginworks Softwares who says that SMEs have pressing short term business goals to meet, and some of them turn to technology to help achieve this. “As they look to the market for technological solutions, they are not able to make the right decisions as there are too many solutions. So, for any new technology, aligning to the SMEs immediate objectives is important to make its presence felt. Many technology firms lose out when they don’t have specific solutions for SMEs,” Juneja added.

“The biggest challenge is resources: funds and technical expertise. Moreover, the success of an application adoption also hinges on the

buy in and the time that top management gives during the implementation of an application,” says Rajesh Gupta, CTO and Co-founder, Busy Infotech.

User resistance and training employees to ensure adoption is another key challenge that majorly affects ERP adoption. “Most people are afraid of changing the ways of doing things. Businesses implement ERP systems to improve the complex business environment, make the processes efficient and to enhance profitability. But many projects fail as organisations are unable to manage the transition smoothly and ensure user adoption, that is so necessary for successful ERP implementation,” adds WoodApple’s Roy. There are inherent challenges in implementing an ERP system such as changes in business processes that discourage user adoption. Once the system is in place and the business process is mapped out, it becomes a challenge to handle exceptions. Sometimes, the inability of the system to cope with new scenarios becomes such an issue that it can cause business loss leading to implementation failure.

“The biggest hurdle is change in business processes and in the discipline of structuring business operations as implementing an ERP is an elaborate project, disrupting normal business. The second challenge is the systems failure to handle exceptions, which lead to break down of the system itself,” says Shoaib of Tally.

“The key personnel will have to be trained on the new system. Not only will they have to get used to new interface but also some new ways of doing the old tasks. Moreover, there must be total commitment from the owner or the top executive to ensure that the decisions are in the best interest of the organization and no department gets undue advantage,” WoodApple’s Debajit Roy. Access to capital is another challenge preventing the uptake of ERP penetration among SMEs. In a bid to overcome this challenge, vendors are actively exploring the cloud model to offer the pay-as-you-go model for SMEs. “While bringing products to SMEs, Microsoft always ensures

“WE WERE THE FIRST ONES TO ROLL OUT AN EFFECTIVE ERP BASED ON ROBUST TECHNOLOGY WITH A CLEAR GROWTH ROAD MAP.” SANJAY AGARWALA, MANAGING DIRECTOR, EASTERN SOFTWARE SYSTEMS.

COVER STORY

“SMES HAVE PRESSING SHORT TERM BUSINESS GOALS TO MEET, AND SOME OF THEM TURN TO TECHNOLOGY TO HELP ACHIEVE THIS.” RAJESH GUPTA, CTO AND COFOUNDER, BUSY INFOTECH.

they are affordable for the segment. We base our licensing on concurrent user model that helps an SME to optimize on the total cost of ownership.

We also provide the solution on a hosted model which enables an SME to implement an ERP in a pay-as-you-go model. This also ensures a very low upfront cost,” says Subhomoy of Microsoft Dynamics India.

Role of channel in ERP market Vendors have extensively leveraged partners to build awareness about the products and to reach out to customers. The partner is a trusted IT advisor who has the capability to address the specific needs of the customer. Thus the partner plays an important role in selling and servicing the customer.

The vendor also plays an important role of ensuring that the customer uses relevant technology, and is able to adopt innovative business processes which ensure that operations remain efficient. Therefore it is extremely important for customers to choose the right vendors and partners.

Since applications for the SME are priced competitively, it is important to have volumes.

Therefore, partners are the only way to take it

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ERP

“THE SUCCESS OF AN APPLICATION ADOPTION ALSO HINGES ON THE BUY IN AND THE TIME THAT TOP MANAGEMENT GIVES DURING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF AN APPLICATION.” DEBAJIT ROY, CEO, WOODAPPLE UNIKSOLUTIONZ.

to the market, in order to reach a large segment of people. With their local knowledge and contacts they can play a vital role both in sales and implementation. Partners form a key piece of the vendors’ business as they provide presales, sales, implementation and support services.

Ramco has developed a sophisticated partner eco-system, based on a double tier model for sales and implementation. The company has branded its partners as Ramco Cloud Business Partner for business development, marketing and selling of RODE; Ramco Cloud Solution Partner for sales, implementation and support; Ramco Cloud Delivery Partner for implementation of solution at the customer’s site and customer support; Ramco Cloud Alliance Partner for distribution, sales, implementation and support.

“We will continue with the existing model, and retain a strong focus on enabling our existing partners to sell, grow and support customers better. We will also add more partners in the future to increase our reach and cater to the growing demand specifically in SME segment,” says Sukumar R, of Ramco OnDemand ERP. Currently Ramco has an active partner eco-system to help it reach customers in metros and tier two cities. The company is also seeking new partners to reach a wider base of organizations, and clusters.

WoodApple is one of the few partners with certified Sage and Microsoft professionals. This gives the company an edge in creating customized solutions on Sage products. This helps to position its offering as not only selling a product but solving a problem by offering a solution. Its strength lies in the experience and expertise in the domain and technology understanding. “We always take the additional effort of reconfirming the requirements and confirming the solution before getting into a project, which helps us to make sure that we can deliver what we commit. It may take a little time to demonstrate a proof of concept solution, but we believe it is appropriate to earn the customer’s confidence in the very beginning,” say WoodApple’s Roy.

Tally has initiated a massive exercise in developing a large eco system to sell and support its application. With over 20,000 Tally partners who sell and over 1200 odd partners who service the product, they are able to reach out to a very large market place.

During the last quarter of 2011, Tally had undertaken a massive campaign to enable its partner ecosystem to reach out to business prospects by designing special business development meetings and events. This initiative will definitely aid the partners to cement their relationship with existing customers and help grow their businesses.

Microsoft works closely with its partners to ensure that they are able to provide the best solutions to customers. It will continue to build a comprehensive partner ecosystem around its ERP products, including, software vendors, resellers and others. “Both vendor and channel partners play an important role in influencing the SMEs to

“SELECTING THE RIGHT VENDOR AND THE APPROPRIATE SOLUTION IS A VERY SIGNIFICANT STEP IN ERP ADOPTION.” DHEERAJ JUNEJA, CEO AND FOUNDER, LOGINWORKS SOFTWARES

adopt ERP solutions. We have designed some programs to educate channel partners about Microsoft products and benefits. This would help them to provide right solution to their end customers,” says Microsoft’s Subhomoy Sengupta.

He further added, “We are also expanding the community by partnering in new ways with service providers around the world. We are also actively engaging with various industry clusters, and have delivered solutions along with our partners to cater to the vertical/micro vertical specific needs.”

The future is cloud-based ERP Organizations in the growth mode often find it difficult to sustain business efficiency, employee productivity, and customer responsiveness. These challenges require a powerful end-to-end ERP as part of the IT set up. The conventional ERP model, which was once considered as the right business tool comes with its own set of difficulties in terms of cost, long implementation time, huge infrastructure costs and lack of flexibility.

But today, new methods of delivery and better technology allows companies to access simple, powerful, easy and cheap solutions that can handle complex business situations. With increasing maturity and robustness of Internet technologies, it is possible to run core business solutions on the Internet, even from remote locations.

The SaaS application is leased and maintained by the provider enabling the customer to make huge cost savings. So much so, that small to medium sized businesses prefer leasing SaaS applications because it does not require to develop, maintain and host the application.

Most SMEs are increasingly adopting SaaS for ERP deployment. The primary rationale being that the customer base is becoming increasingly global, forcing companies to adopt sophisticated applications such as ERP that will streamline their business operations and allow them to service customers better and in a cost-effective manner.

Tally offers a choice to the customer and its SaaS model takes into account the various needs of customers in terms of application availability, data availability and payment model. Customers have different needs in terms of location of software, location of data, and payment model. Technically speaking, the software may be on premise or in the cloud, the data may be on premise or in the cloud, the payment model could be per-use, peruser, time-based or one-time, and so on. “We have been walking a path to cover the various models and combinations rather than just one. Let us say a customer does not always have reliable connectivity for various reasons. If he desires not to own

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“CREATION OF A TALENTED POOL OF CONSULTANTS WHO CAN DO SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION IS ONE OF THE KEY CHALLENGES.” ASHEESH PANDIA, BRAND MANAGEMENT AND CORPROATE COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANT

the software but pay for it as a service, our model of SaaS covers it; we provide him Tally on rental as well as on premise,” says Tally’s Shoaib of Tally.

Microsoft believes that the scope for cloud based ERP solutions is large. From an economic point of view, small and mid-sized companies benefit from cloud based services as they do not have to invest heavily in IT infrastructure. Cloudbased service ensures that the company uses its resources more towards core activities and the provider focuses on centralized services reducing operating costs and providing competitive advantage.

Viability depends on individual requirements and deployment scenarios. Connectivity is

improving at a phenomenal rate. “Our product is offered on premise and on cloud. Therefore companies located in low connectivity areas can adopt the on-premise version. Given the phenomenal growth in connectivity, they can also gradually shift to a mix of on-premise and cloud or even shift entirely as and when the connectivity improves in their location,” says Subhomoy Sengupta.

ERP in SMEs is here to stay, in all forms. There is an increasing trend among SMEs to move towards cloud-based ERP as it addresses the infrastructure issue.

The future is definitely cloud for most enterprise applications, including ERP. Only it is more

COVER STORY

about the ripe time and migration rate. Newer mid-market entrants are embracing cloud computing but cloud still seems a little challenging and immature for the SMEs. Connectivity in remote locations is still not enterprise grade, and hence, still a huge roadblock. For SMEs battling connectivity issues, it may be a good idea to wait until that gets resolved first. In the process, these companies are likely to benefit from more robust and mature adoption practices.

The finding is as Asheesh Pandia, Brand Management and Corproate Communications Consultant, says, “Opportunities are great for those who can provide expertise in ERP implementation especially if they are competent enough to do quick deployment and keep the total cost of ownership very low. Creation of a talented pool of consultants who can do successful implementation is one of the key challenges that the industry needs to address at the moment. Implementation as well as operational efficiency is where the focus should be currently.”

Finally…

There is a huge scope in the SME for the ERP implementation as they are the major drivers of economy in India and they have to be very business competitive to sustain their growth.

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SME CHAT

ARUN DHARMALINGAM VICE PRESIDENT, PARTNER LED, VELOCITY SALES, CISCO

“SMALL BUSINESSES NOW VIEW IT INVESTMENT AS STRATEGIC DECISION” SMBs are becoming a strong support to the Indian economy and Cisco being a major enabler of IT is focusing on this segment very aggressively. SME Channels spoke to Arun Dharmalingam, Vice President, Partner Led, Velocity Sales, Cisco to know more about their latest programme. Excerpts.

What is so special about Cisco “Advantage Now” programme?

The Cisco Advantage Now Road show is designed to help our partners across the country to build a stronger small and medium business (SMB) practice. SMBs are a key focus area for Cisco and Advantage Now reaffirms our commitment to this market. This program will enable our partners to provide a structured, prioritized evolution path for small and medium sized businesses, which can address the business challenges of today while maximizing the future potential of their technology investments.

Year on year, what kind of growth are you seeing in this programme as it has touched 1000 partners and 10 cities now?

Advantage Now was first organized in 2010 and we had participation from 488 partners. Since then, we have had four editions and seen tremendous response from our channel partners. This year, we are reaching out to approximately 1000 partners across 10 cities. We transitioned to a partner-led business model last year and since then we have significantly increased our channel efforts to augment partner capabilities and arm with the right products and know-how to better serve this fast-growing segment.

What

all

activities

are

you

expecting to happen in the programme?

Advantage Now! will feature a series of informative meets to share with partners about the latest initiatives, products, programs, insights and promotions from Cisco, to help them better serve SMB customers across the country. We will also introduce our current quarterly promotion ‘Race to Rio’ to our partners, which offers exciting rewards including an all expense paid trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to witness the Rio Carnival LIVE! In addition, we will be showcasing latest collaboration, security and connectivity solutions and products specifically designed for SMBs. Which cities are you covering this time and why these cities, and why 10 cities only?

We strongly believe that tier II cities will drive Cisco India’s growth story, hence strengthening our market position in such high-growth markets is an integral part of our strategy to achieve the targeted growth. Today, Cisco is a fully partner driven organization and with over 1200 network of partners, we are well represented throughout the country.

The current edition of Advantage Now will cover 9 cities in India - Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Lucknow, Aurangabad, Goa, Vishakhapatnam, Trivandrum, Bhubaneswar and one in Bangladesh – Dacca. However, this is a bi-annual road

show and we plan to reach out to more cities and partners in future.

What all products are you demonstrating?

We will use this unique platform to connect with partners and communicate updates from our solutions across UCS C- Series, Unified Communications & WebEx portfolio. Given the many types of SMBs and their varying stages of technology awareness and adoption, Cisco is working with partners to create bundles with a focused technology direction that can be effectively targeted at the most receptive customer prospects. Advantage Now! will educate channel partners on these technology directions and help them effectively tap into the business needs of small and medium businesses.

What benefits partners will derive from this programme?

Since is it focused on the SMEs, what kind of pain points you wish to address?

Businesses today have become very dynamic in their approach to communication and are adopting new and different ways to interact with their customers so that they can serve them better and build stronger relationships. Partners that create solid foundations for small business networks - that effectively integrate people, processes and information - are reaping higher returns on

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SME CHAT

Are you also focusing on small enterprises?

Yes, we have a strong focus on both SMBs and SMEs. In fact, they are one of the fastest growing vertical for us. At Cisco, classification of an organization into a small and medium business is done on the basis of the number of desktops the company has and not on the basis of the number of workers employed. A small business is one that has between 1 and 99 computers, and businesses with 100 and 200 personal computers is classified as the SMB market. The midmarket sector is between 201 and 999 PCs.

investments and developing better long term relationships with their end customers.

To this end, this programme will help our partners lead the conversation with their end customers and help build a stronger practice by providing them with information they need about

new and enhanced Cisco solutions for SMBs. Furthermore, this programme will also help our partners discover SMB solutions that will help them be more profitable in the here and now while enabling their end customers meet the challenge of tomorrow.

What kind of contribution and growth are you expecting from SME segment in coming years?

While a significant number of SMEs are still at a basic technology adoption level, others are moving to more mature levels. There has been a clear change in the attitude of small businesses who now view IT investment as a strategic decision enabling them to fulfill their business needs.

More so, when they are looking at adopting technologies that will help them scale their business and give them a competitive edge, especially in a global arena. This segment represents a huge opportunity for us and comprises a significant portion of Cisco’s customer base. SME

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VIA

VIA GUNG HO ON

INDIAN TABLET MARKET GROWTH

Nearly 10 years back, when the mainstream PC was of bigger size based on ATX form factor or other versions consuming high power and occupying much of space, a Taiwanheadquartered company - VIA Technologies had brought in Mini-ITX to save power and space.

NEETA ISRANI

neeta@smechannels.com

RICHARD BROWN, VP – INTERNATIONAL MARKETING, VIA TECHNOLOGIES

“THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT HAS DONE A GOOD JOB IN DEFINING A MODEL OF HOW TO DEPLOY THE TABLETS.”

K

nown as the father of small formfactor and low power consuming PCs, VIA Technologies had predicted much before that, lower power consumption will be the major USP of PC sales. 10 years back they had launched PCs based on Mini-ITX and Cyrix processor. It had actually taken the industry by

surprise and a lot of winks. Once again after 10 years, this company has taken another bold step by bringing in platforms for the Tablets that are within the reach of aam admi or common man.

Today, VIA Technologies has a wide and strong portfolio in different technology including x86 CPUs with Nano on DualCore (QuadCore coming up), Chipsets and embedded solutions

including CDMA, SOC and even USB 3.0, which is becoming standard on the PC industry.

Richard Brown, VP – International Marketing, VIA Technologies, said, “There are very few companies in the world who cover all three segments including x86 processors, platform for Tablets and the CDMA technology through VIA Telecom.

We are quite well positioned in all three markets.

It is very interesting now from our perspective as you have got a huge PC market, though people no more get excited about PC these days but still it is a very big market. Then you have got exciting Tablet and mobile communications market.”

The company is also offering solutions for Thin-Clients. In India, this business has grown leaps and bounds over the period of time. Now when VIA has brought in platforms for Tablets, there is a question mark why Tablets? The simple reason is that the company has the natural growth path to Tablets after Thin-Clients. One way, Tablet is an extended Thin-Client than a PC because like Thin-Client, it delivers applications without carrying the entire burden. It does not get issues of security either. You can browse different websites and even take it to the corporate network and run enterprise applications online. So while VIA will work aggressively on Thin-Client front, they will also transition to mobility in the cloud.

Another reason for VIA Technology to go into the Tablet market is that there is a strong traction for Tablets in the global market and India is no exception. People with low income group, which is really huge in India, are not able to buy the products from Apple or Samsung. So, naturally there is a huge un-tapped market for low-cost Tabs where VIA will play a major role.

As per Richard, so far the market is polarized between Apple iPads which cost US$ 499 or more and the China White Box Tablets, which is growing very fast - which are priced below US$74. Of course, there are many other bands like Samsung, Dell, Huawei, ViewSonic, ASUS, MSI, etc. But in 2012, there will be clear bifurcation between Apple iPad at the top, Amazon Kindle at the middle with a lot of service attached to it and there will be a whole lot of white box Tablets at the bottom.

Richard says, “We are getting good business without putting too much of efforts in the market.

You can check with naaptop.com. It is an informal rapid growth market. The market will be more formalized as the corporate customers will accept Tablets as part of their solutions. The market will be much more mature next year. Our strategy is two pronged– one, we will work with the manufacturers in Shenzhen, China and we will provide them with the turnkey solutions. It means the quickly the new generation of Android product

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comes out to the market; we will have the new SoC for the platform. Today, we deliver 7” design though we have 8” to 10” designs also, with good graphics, good internet browsing capability, touch interface, productivity and connectivity applications, eBook reader, etc.”

Today, Tablets are very good gifting products.

In most of the schemes, these days, Tablets are the permanent feature. In India, there are a lot of ideas as to how to use the Tablets. We are seeing articles on the front page of the daily newspapers in terms of various applications developed around Tablet.

Already, the government has started using Tablets for census collection in Bangalore. The Aakash project shows that the government has understood the importance of digitization in schools – even though it is for primary school or elementary school. Richard adds, “The Indian Govt. has done a good job in defining a model of how to deploy tablets.” Globally, 1.8 billion populations are in the age group of 10 to 24, 90% of them are living in developing countries. In India, most of the population is below 25. For them tablet is the good way to deliver education. These are cheap to deploy and easy to manage.”

These are really high quality but low cost machines to deliver the education particularly

when our curriculum is getting more dynamic.

Compared to Tablets, PCs are still expensive to deploy and difficult to manage. Of course, connectivity is another area of challenge for the Tablet market, which will be eliminated soon though.

“Tablet has just started and we assume that in next 5 years broadband will be better. My experience now compared to 5 years ago is much better in India. You do not have to ask the hotels if they have internet. If we want connectivity, we are now carrying the dongle, which is good enough for email and web surfing. With the transition to 4G, the bandwidth will be even more,” says Richard.

“Yes, there are still issues but Tablet will take some time to grow at a time with the growth of wireless broadband.”

So clearly, VIA Technologies’ focus for India is completely on Tablet market for now. Currently they have a local manufacturing arrangement within India, which will also take care of RMA support. It is believed that the market for Tablets in India will touch 112 million in 2012 end.

VIA Technologies, with its own manufacturing, designing and customization, etc. is expected to make a great impact. For Richard, it is much easier if they are working here than working in Shenzhen and in long term they can do the innovations

TREND SETTER

for the future needs.

From the commercial engagement perspective, VIA Technologies is working with Simmtronics as their Indian partner for channel and SIs. Simmtronics is selling a range of VIA Nano - based boards called PC-1 and they have a number of different boards also. The company will be launching motherboards based on Nano X2 series, which is based on DualCore which will be followed by roll out of QuadCore based mobos. Besides Simmtronics, VIA also has strong integration with HCL, HP, VXL, etc. for chipsets and embedded chipsets.

Richard says, “2011 was a good start for us and we want to improve a lot this year. 2011 was more of introducing our products to the market and understanding the need of the market as well and making people aware of VIA’s coming aggressively to the Indian market. We are not looking at any volume now.”

Finally…

Apart from Tablets, for 2012, VIA’s strategy will be to focus on low power small form-factor PCs, expand the motherboard line and enhance cooperation with the channel partners to increase nation-wide coverage.

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SME TREND

VISWANATH RAMASWAMY, VP, POWER SYSTEMS, SYSTEMS & TECHNOLOGY GROUP, IBM INDIA/SA.

GIVING POWER EDGE TO SMEs Traditionally, the vendors have been positioning x86 servers with the SMEs, but the competition and powerhungry applications have compelled the SMEs to choose products with higher RoI with a slight higher TCO.

T

hese days the market is different, customers understand the actual meaning of technologies including the complex technologies i.e. server and storage. So, only thing is that they expect ROI matrix basic of which they deciside. In this scenario, whether it is x86 servers or non-x 86 servers, whether it is Windows, Linux or UNIX server does not stand as exciting to the customers. In this scenario, IBM finds there is a positive traction of Power processor with AIX OS. This sounds very good for IBM but from the overall market perspective, it is excellent.

From the evolution point of view, overall servers’ number, compared to the earlier times, has increased. There has been sprawling of data centers across different locations in India. People have started consolidating the workloads and physical servers. That is why about 5-6 years back, Blade as an evolution was seen in the market. IBM was the first as an innovator to bring such technology. The best part of innovation was trying to consolidate not only the server infrastructure but also the infrastructure around the servers. While a lot of organizations were consolidating the compute, IBM actually went ahead to collapse the ecosystem outside the servers included networking and storage. It was physical consolidation where there was heterogeneity in the system with Wintel, Linux, Power Linux, AMD, etc. So, it was not that you were constrained to one particular technology so you could make the best of all.

Slowly and steadily from physical consolida-

tion, there came the era of virtualizations and it is still continues even today. Viswanath Ramaswamy, VP, Power Systems, Systems & Technology Group, IBM India/SA., says, “While virtualization was not new for IBM, it has been there for ages and decades much before from the days of mainframe inception, where hypervisor layer came in. It was not called virtualization as a word at that time and that got extended to Power platform and UNIX platform and x 86 platforms through VMware.”

So, within the physical consolidation, how much more can one get was the next question.

Now the servers are physically consolidated but how to crass hundreds of servers physically and pull out the maximum performance out of that?

It is like with x number of horsepower of a Car, how much one can pull out of the engine is the most important thing. That is where virtualization really came into play. Here IBM unleashed the technology innovation of virtualization on its own way. So on the Power system front, IBM has Power VM, which has inbuilt virtualization engine or software. On the x86 front, customers also have choice of VMware and any other virtualization technology. The same virtualization has also been extended to IBM storage. The intention of the company is to offer the maximum of what the customers invest in terms of ROI. Giving an example, Viswanath says, “One can invest in an aircraft and don’t know how to fly or use that once in 10 years and then the investment will go down the drain. This is where virtualization comes to play. It enhances the potential of harness-

ing more power from the compute or from the infrastructure what you have invested in and we see the trend is going to continue further. If the CPU, the memory and the hard disk all of them together giving an X performance with only 30-35 % of utilization, now we can shift the bar to 60- 70% of utilization with maximum range of performance.”

In bargain it offers a lot to the customer in terms of cost of ownership of many other things - be it software licensing, application workloads dynamically shifting, etc. There could be workloads which could be picking only in a particular part of the month for salary or Pay slip or HR whereas the rest of the month, it is sitting idle.

Why one should dedicate a server for that particular department? It is better to use resources for other application including mail messaging, billing or invoices. This has been the level that technology has really grown. That is where IBM Technology on Power VM, x86, x5, etc. are all going towards that direction. That is coming up hugely as a trend. Now it is moving forward at a much better rate to each one of the departments.

There is common pull of resources and those are being shared with each one of them while IBM has not yet embarked on the public cloud but what IBM sees is the further trend on cloud technology. The kind of cloud offerings IBM has is vast the reason being they have the software stack in form of Analytic, InfoSphere, etc. IBM has also hardware technologies including Intel, Power, Mainframe, etc. which the customers can pick and choose. Plus on top of it they also have services. So

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SME TREND

there are pre-packages which the customers can really embrace and embark on.

Cloud has been a very commonly used word today, but for most organization it is a myth.

Giving a safe passage to the organizations to adop cloud without any hassels, IBM has recently launched Cloud Starter Kit - an entry level software which can go along with Intel server along with Power server. Here the customers can start embracing the journey of Cloud. It has very minimal feature sets for smaller organization to tasteon Cloud and then slowly graduate them into a much larger sphere. He adds, “We had earlier an offering called CloudBurst, which is now called Cloud Start Kit and it is picking up in the market in terms demand. As a box to the customers and with a little bit of customization, it is pretty simple to use. It has both x86 and Power variant.”

As per Viswanath, POWER based system is much powerful with high RoI because the performance of one core of Power server is fundamentally 3-4 times minimum than the closest competitor. So if one compares one core of Power processor it is equivalent to the four cores of competitive processor. With the database licensing cost pretty high one can save a lot on the data base itself if one embraces Power platform. It means if the customer goes with non-Power environment and requires 32 cores on risk processor then he technically would pay for 32 licenses if it is Itanium and if it is normal Intel then he would pay for 16 licenses but the same 32 if convert for a Power platforms then it would need about 8-10

cores that means one would need about 8-10 data base license. It is an immediate saving. One’s acquisition cost becomes lower and the management also becomes lower. The moment the acquisition cost become lower than running cost for infrastructure becomes lower automatically. The other good part is that one can embrace any database including Oracle, Informix, DB2, etc., saving a lot on that. So from cost economics perspective, it becomes all the more real meaningful sense and that is why people are really looking at the total cost of ownership for 3-5 years. In that software cost is the biggest component which can really hike the total investment on the infrastructure.

Therefore the trend is also picking up in terms of customers really taking an infrastructure - related decision rather than a performance - based decisions.

This is probably the reason why a lot of customers are embracing Power systems. On a worldwide basis there is probably more than 3000 migrations have happed to Power systems. The customers moving from non-IBM platforms to IBM platforms really shows that the confidence, the trust, the performance and reliability coupled with the savings you get over a period of 3-5 years is much higher than going with the existing platform.

Besides, there is a lot ecosystem support. So there is a huge amount of technology superiority in the box and customers are really looking at that.

Viswanath maintains, “A number of customers are asking us how to consolidate a number of x86 servers to a smaller footprint – be it on Power

or X5 of SMB. A lot of SMB customers are really embracing Power for their SAP because for SMB customers it is more critical that their investment is put on the right bucket. They are not giants that they keep on investing in IT every year. Once they invest on IT they typically need to last for 7 years because they are not fundamentally an IT organization. Therefore the whole of this year we saw a lot of SAP wins on Power and a lot of migrations have happened from either Oracle or HP Itanium.”

He adds, “How we hand hold the customers?

We have a huge team which is a migration factory – the IBM STG lab - residing in India helps customer migrates from one platform to other platform smoothly. We have done that for many banks, SMB customers, etc. and we see a success driving out of it. While some of the data base is IBM and some other is non-IBM but that also shows that customers still wanting to continue with the existing data base but want to move out to Power platform because they are able to get more power and performance from the IBM platform and IBM is there to help them seamlessly to migrate from platform A to B and that is really a big success.”

Other than this, within SMB, there is a lot of channel acceptance. Supporting them IBM has started a lot of channel partner programmes on volume products of Power because the myth is that Power systems are not easy to sell so IBM had deliberately made the Power Unix system simple for the partners. Besides, IBM has created a lot of tool where the customers can make comparisons.

To add to that, specially for the SMBs, in universities and colleges to pervade AIX amongst these students community and build a community out of it, IBM has launched AIX scholar programme in India. The company gives the universities server at low cost and its services arm trains the students. Out of the number of students the top 10 students get waiver off the certification fee.

Finally…

With all these initiatives on power, IBM has emerged as No.1 and is growing in terms of its market share. For last quarters the company is increasing the gap and continuing to be leader in the space. To add to this, the company has embarked on a lot ISV programmes. Today, the spread of Power system is not just restricted to banking, government or Telcos, it has presence in Retail, Pharma, Smaller Banks, Cellphone operators, Travel and transportation, FMCG, etc. segments. Because of the technological superiority, IBM Power Systems are way ahead of others - be it Oracle or HP and there is continuous upsurge in Power systems as far as overall business in India is concerned.

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SECURITY CORNER

BHASKAR BAKTHAVATSALU, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, INDIA & SAARC CHECK POINT SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGIES

PEOPLE SHOULD BE CONSCIOUS ABOUT MULTITUDE OF ATTACKS Next year, botnets will become one of the most significant network security threats facing organizations.

A

s security breaches continue to make headlines and the sophistication of today’s Internet attacks grows more complex, organizations of all sizes are forced to reevaluate their risk management strategies in light of emerging technology trends and prescriptive compliance requirements.

Based on research and customer feedback, Check Point projects businesses will see a few interesting shifts in 2012: Hackers and Businesses Hone in on Mobile Security Mobile computing has become a common method of business communication and administrators are steadily beginning to accept the trend. However, IT administrators struggle with securing the abundance of devices and different operating systems connecting to the corporate network, and are challenged with establishing the appropriate mobile and network access policies. According to Check Point research, 78 percent of businesses reported there

were more than twice as many personal devices connecting to their corporate network compared to two years ago and 63 percent believe this trend is related to the increase in security incidents.

Mobile devices are yet another threat vector for hackers to steal information and gain access to sensitive information. Without the right precautions in place, a hacker can upload a Trojan horse to a mobile device and within seconds, take pictures every 20 seconds and capture sensitive data on the device’s screen – including snapshots of SMS messages, emails, mobile web-browsing history or your location, for example. The amount of variance for mobile-based malware is expected to double, creating more attention and security awareness for mobile threats in the coming year.

BRIEF PROFILE Bhaskar is the Regional Director, Check Point Software Technologies – India & SAARC. He heads the sales operation and holds responsibility for developing the Indian subcontinent security market for Check Point solution and developing the channel. He started check point India office & been with Check Point India for last 8 years.

Bhaskar comes with 8 years of experience in channel/distribution/ system integration and carries with him more than 15 years of experience in IT industry. He was instrumental for building the sales and marketing operation in India and has made it one of the fastest growing markets for Check Point across the globe.

Popularity of QR Codes Look familiar? Recently, more retailers and advertisers have begun to leverage QR (Quick Response) Codes to encourage users to scan the barcode with their mobile phone and obtain more information about the product. Check Point expects this trend to

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SECURITY CORNER

rise in popularity, but users should be wary about QR codes that may be dangerous. With a simple scan from your smartphone, a hacker can exploit a QR code, redirecting the user to a malicious URL, file or application.

Rise in Human Intelligence and Social Engineering Attacks It’s important to emphasize the evolution of security for operating systems has become more mature – and with the right security strategy and protection in place, can help businesses withstand a wide number of threats. In 2012, we expect to see more hackers looking for other ways to breach an organization…by targeting the people.

Socially-engineered attacks traditionally target people with an implied knowledge or access to sensitive information. In just a few minutes, hackers can populate a host of information about an individual based on information users publicly share through these communication tools (i.e. Facebook to search and obtain your name, birth date and social network of friends; Twitter to learn more about your interests and community of followers; LinkedIn for employment information, start date or education background; as well as FourSquare or Yelp for “check-ins” and location based services – to name a few). Because social engineering attacks have information that is customized to target an individual, it can appear more legitimate.

Check Point research has shown the primary motivation of social engineering attacks is financial gain (51%), followed by access to proprietary information (46%), competitive advantage (40%) and revenge (14%) and can cost businesses anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000 per security incident. Preventing social engineering attacks requires a combination of technology and security awareness throughout the organization.

Malware Becomes Big Business How much is it worth being a hacker today?

Cybercriminals are no longer isolated amateurs.

They belong to well-structured organizations that resemble terrorist cells - with money, motivation and goals. They can deploy considerable intelligence, time and resources in order to execute botnets that can cost businesses millions. Often, attackers will not attack a target unless it’s worth the time – and often times won’t go to the trouble if the incident can’t be monetized.

It’s important to note that financial information is not the only valuable data worth stealing.

Cybercriminals tend to look for general customer information and less for specific billing or credit card data. Such information can be very lucrative for hackers, enabling them to customize future attacks or spam campaigns that increase the likeli-

hood of their success. And in some cases, social identities can be more valuable to hackers than your actual credit cards. With over 800 million Facebook users, most of whom are active and log on daily, social networking tools are opening new doors for cybercriminals.

Botnets Serve as the Backdoor to the Enterprise Next year, botnets will become one of the most significant network security threats facing organizations. Compromising anywhere from a few thousand to well over a million systems, botnets are used by cybercriminals to take over computers and execute illegal and damaging activities – such as stealing data, gaining access to unauthorized network resources, initiating Denial of Service (DoS) attacks or distributing spam.

In the past, it was assumed that most of the popular botnets were running on Windows machines, this is no longer true today - Linux and Mac systems are not immune. In 2012, botnets will evolve using a combination of social engineering, zero-day exploits, and will take advantage of the proliferation of mobile devices and social networking. In addition, new botnet variants will be cross-platform and companies can expect to see more Apple, Android and other mobile based botnets pop up where they communicate to Command and Control servers (C&C) using via 3G or Wi-Fi networks.

Spike in Businesses Making the Migration to IPv6 The pool of unallocated IPv4 addresses is shrinking rapidly with the last block of IPv4 addresses from the ICANN Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) being assigned on January, 31, 2011. Due to the impending shortage of IPv4 addresses, IPv6 is starting to be deployed widely. Architecturally, IPv6 presents its own security challenges, including parts of the protocol that are different from IPv4 as well as the transition mechanisms used to deploy it. However, for some companies, IPv6 could already be running on enterprise networks without the knowledge of the network administrators and may be used as a covert channel by hackers and botnets. As more organizations migrate to IPv6 next year, companies should carefully consider what is needed in order to make the transition to IPv6 securely.

Leveraging Virtualization as a Security Defense In the early stages, virtualization was mainly used to consolidate servers and IT resources for cost, space and energy savings purposes, yet has found many more uses and applications since.

Businesses are beginning to leverage virtualization technologies as an additional layer of security defense. With Check Point Go or WebCheck, for example, organizations can protect their network and endpoints with unique browser virtualization technology that segregates and secures corporate data from the Internet – allowing users the freedom to surf with full protection against drive-bydownloads, phishing attempts and malware.

The Emergence of Socialbots A socialbot is a computer software program that controls an account on a particular social network and has the ability to perform basic activities, such as posting a message or sending a friend request.

A socialbot’s success lies in its ability to mimic a human, making it unique to a type of malware. If a user accepts a socialbot’s friend request, the bot gains access to the individual’s social circle and personal information that can be used for identity fraud. Although many savvy users have multiple social networking accounts integrated into one, synching several accounts can give socialbots an opportunity to execute one attack while reaching multiple audiences.

Major events in 2012 Will Foster More SEO-based Security Risks In the coming year, consumers and businesses should be prepared to see a wide range of Black Hat SEO Attacks – hacking attempts that manipulate search engine results to make their (malicious) links appear higher than legitimate results in search engines – generating a greater number of clicks on malicious websites. Hackers tend to exploit specific annual events, such as Cyber Monday or Tax Season, that lure users into clicking on malicious links on websites and phishing scams. In 2012, the world should expect to see a flurry of news headlines and ads focused around major events in 2012, such as the London Olympics, US Presidential Elections or Super Bowl XLVI, for example. The year of 2012 will be no exception and we should expect to see hackers attempt to exploit common search terms centered on headline news that will propagate within search engines and social networking outlets. Businesses should enforce the necessary precautions and ensure they have the appropriate URL Filtering and Application protections in place to mitigate the risk.

As companies combat traditional Internet threats, security issues with Web 2.0, mobile devices and cloud computing contribute to the growing list of priorities for the CSO. This rise in IT complexity is causing organizations to change the way they think about security and encourage companies to better align IT security with business needs.

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SME CHAT

HP PSG

RAJAT MEHTA COUNTRY MANAGER, EMERGING BUSINESS UNIT, PSG, HP INDIA SALES

“DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION IS NEXT LOGICAL STEP”

Virtual PC or cloud computing is gradually going into the enterprise space. People are finding it a great value in terms of productivity. They save a lot of cost towards maintaining and managing the devices. For some reason, people do not accept it. SME Channels spoke to Rajat Mehta, Country Manager, Emerging Business Unit, PSG, HP India Sales about his perspective regarding the adoption and issues behind it. Excerpts

What is the level of adoption in virtual PCs? As per IDC virtualized market will grow 13% YoY. It is a global trend that this technology is becoming more and more relevant and prominent. Security can be one reason, green computing is another and work from anywhere can be another. Due to increasing cost of infrastructure, people want their employees work from anywhere. In our country, B- and C- class towns have potential in terms of infrastructure. With 3G, 4G and WLan penetration happening more and more we can enhance office productivity along with virtual computing.

If you look at any large enterprises, they have already implemented server and storage virtualization. Desktop virtualization is next logical step.

NIC has been pioneer in adopting thin computing. Now the situation is how SMEs take advantage of 4G or 3G where connectivity can be much better to make Virtual PC a reality. The larger cell phone adoption will change the game of Virtual PC as cell phone can act like a solid-state thin client. Some of the pioneers have realised how to take the computing to D and E – class cities, even to the villages. People have started looking at shared computing where data centre and client

computing is taken to the desktop where one can share one desktop among ten people.

What could be the price advantage?

In a typical 25 seat SME situation, it will be a saving of INR1,000,000 in CAPEX only. In terms of OPEX, it will be much higher as there will be less usage of power; manageability and maintenance will come at much lesser cost.

What are the advantages of VDI vis-a-vis the traditional PCs? Since everything is going into the data centre, the entire computing is happening in the data centre.

It becomes a militarized zone. You get higher security, better manageability and higher client lifecycle. Normally, you replace your client device in every three years or five years, now with virtual PC, you can have an extended life span of 10–15 years because everything is happen in the data centre. Thin client is a solid-State Device, which allows to reduce power consumption of 22 watt compared to the normal PC which needs 180 watt power. Since you use less power you need less air-conditioning. If one combines ‘Reducing

the power’ and ‘less air condition’, it drives you towards green computing.

From the SME context, if they have multiple small offices then it will be a bigger saving. Secondly, they can work from anywhere by connecting their hand-held device to the data centre using wireless broadband dongles. Today, since SMEs find working from home is a bigger value proposition, virtualized PC is just apt.

Secondly, client devices like smart phones, mobile phones, tabs, etc. can be commercial productive devices. For example an insurance agent going to the client with paper to be filled up for the official use can fill the form using his tab or smart phone as a terminal having connectivity with the server at the back-end. In the live case example, in UID project, people come to take survey of your identity on a big piece of paper. Instead of that if they use a tablet or a smart phone, which is connected through thin computing to a data centre, whatever data will be entered, will get uploaded immediately to the server.

You are talking about two different things - cloud and virtual computing?

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HP PSG

SME CHAT

“LARGE ENTERPRISES HAVE ALREADY IMPLEMENTED SERVER AND STORAGE VIRTUALIZATION DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION IS NEXT LOGICAL STEP.”

If you look at the thin client, thin computing or virtual computing, there are two primary things server and a data centre. Now the data centre can be in cloud whether it is public, private or hybrid cloud. And cloud is actually misused term it is nothing but a virtualised server and basically the payment gateway comes on top of it. So if you give it as free, the service becomes a public free cloud. If you have a payment gateway on top of it becomes a subscription. So what you are doing is basically taking that data centre onto the cloud and virtualising the whole thing so that it can be accessed from anywhere and you can have a billing after that. End point remain the same, it can be thin client or can be a cell phone, tablet, etc.

What HP is offering in virtualized computing?

We provide entire cloud infrastructure including the end point devices. These thin clients have different operating systems. All these are for enterprise business. Service is being either given by companies like TCS or ourselves as we have entire data centre to host applications for the customer.

Will it affect the consumers?

As a consumer five or ten years back you were putting your photographs on your storage device including a pen-drive or a HDD. Today, you put it on Google or flicker. Look at your communication, you were sending e-mails, today you use Facebook or Twitter. This is nothing but cloud application and these are nothing but consumers’ implementation of cloud computing where your applications are running out of the browser. So

as long as I am enabled to run application out of the browser it will make the life of consumers and commercial easier. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin all these are classy example of commercial utility tools and Google photo, Flicker, etc. are classy example of how cloud computing is changing the world of consumers.

Traditionally people in homes use PC. Today they do not need the PC as they can use smart phones to access Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter and using Google doc they can edit their work and upload the jobs. You don’t need that investment in terms of buying licences and managing the desktop at home. If you have a tablet then you can work on cloud and finish your work. Basically the world is coming towards unified communication and unification of devices is also happening at the same time.

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SME BIZ

AXIS COMMUNICATIONS

VIDEO

SURVEILLANCE ENHANCES BUSINESS EFFICIENCY

Worldwide, things are moving rapidly towards digital format in everything. But, Axis’ 30% Market is Digital & 70% is Analogue. So there is big opportunity to explore. The Company is currently growing at 40-50% and wants to touch 60% YoY growth.

BY NEETA ISRANI neeta@smechannels.com

FACTS ABOUT Year of Operation in India

:

1984

Headquarter

:

Lund, Sweden

Offices

:

37 Countries

First Network Camera

:

1996

First video encoder

:

1998

First HDTV Network camera

:

2006

First thermal network camera

:

2010

Key products

:

Network video solutions, cameras, encoders, management software & Accessories

Website

:

www.axis.com

A

Swedish Company, Axis Communications is a global leader in network video solutions whose products and solutions focus on security surveillance and remote monitoring. In 1996 the company invented the network camera and there was a start of network video. Since then, the company has been in a leadership position in network video. The company represents in major countries across the world.

India is one of the key market for security and surveillance industry and important market for Axis too. The Indian security and surveillance market is growing at a rapid pace and comprises of about 30% of the entire security industry. Raising the demand for security and surveillance has gone up in the last 10-15 years. Security is divided into many sub systems but Axis is only participating in video sector. In the video segment, for a very long time analogue technology has dominated the market but from 1996 Axis came with network video on digital technology. From then the whole market has been transforming from analogue to digital.

Axis Communications started its operations in India four years ago. The company has been

educating the market for transform analogue to digital. For Indian market, Axis is still in the transforming stage from analogue video to digital. Axis on worldwide level has 30% market is digital and 70% is analogue. In India, Axis’ 20-25% market is digital and rest is analogue.

Oh Tee Lee, Regional Director Asia Pacific, Axis Communications said, “India is a very huge market. I think as Indian economy is growing, we opine higher-and- higher adoption of surveillance will take place. In India we have many projects for city surveillance, airport, bus terminus and hotels.

Currently Panasonic and Sony are main competitors for us.”

He adds, “If we look at the classification of emerging economies, we presume India, Russia and China are bigger markets for us. These markets are going to contribute more than 50 % of world economy. We learn from other countries including Russia whose business is five times bigger than India.”

Oh Tee Lee also says that their vision is to make everything open. Everything connected by the network in very open way. The company offers variety of choice to its customers. Axis’ vision is to be the driving force in bringing customers the

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AXIS COMMUNICATIONS

SME BIZ

lion. Axis is mainly in the major metros in India and has partners in Calcutta, Hyderabad, Chennai, who are doing good business with the company. Strictly, Axis is a partner-centric company.

Axis’ marketing models are different to many companies. Its global market share for network cameras is 31.2 per cent by MSI report 2009.

The company has many software partners who love to work with Axis because they trust Axis.

Also the company regularly launches partner programmes. The company has an application Development Partner programme (ADPP) for software partners.

Mr. Lee believes that India is one of the key markets for Axis. The company’s growth in India has been quite encouraging over the years and he wishes to target and achieve similar development in the coming quarters as well. They have identified huge opportunity and therefore wish to invest more in terms of awareness, technology transfer, training and educating the partners to achieve the estimated growth. Currently, they are growing within 40-50% but still they are not happy because they believe to do a lot more in India. However, Mr. Lee wishes to grow 60% YoY. Security demands a big portion of surveillance. Today, surveillance is not just restricted to the sphere of security; it is now emerging as a tool for gathering business intelligence and other applications. The technology trend is clearly moving towards IP video surveillance, which is likely to continue to drive the future of the surveillance industry. With specialized video surveillance devices, intelligent video will continue to emerge as a tool to improve business efficiency.

OH TEE LEE, REGIONAL DIRECTOR ASIA PACIFIC, AXIS COMMUNICATIONS

Finally:-

full benefit of intelligent network video solutions.

Axis aims to further strengthen its position as the leading supplier of network video solutions, driving the technology shift from analogue to digital video surveillance.

Currently, the company has close to 850 channel partners in the country. Axis treats its channel partners as natural partners-in-profit. The company works towards beefing-up the relationship with them and nurture a long - lasting bond that is mutually beneficial. In the first part of this Year, the company will focus on major metros. And very soon move to Hyderabad, Chennai.

Oh Tee Lee explains that the customers should not forget that Axis offers good image quality and

product reliability. The company has so many competitors in which some have good Image or some have good product reliability. But only Axis is providing both the things together. Axis’ main focus is on three things i.e. Quality, Product Reliability and Usability.

Image quality means how beautiful the image is and reliability means how long one can sustain the quality. As per him many of their competitor products, which may look very beautiful for first three months goes down in quality after that.

Axis has around 1 million professional network video products and more than 3 million networking product installations globally. The company’s net sales in 2010 were US$410 mil-

With the addition of video analytics software to the surveillance solutions, enterprises are getting great benefits. Apart from business convenience and requirement of growing number of industry verticals and changing business trends, the security risks on all vital installations, national property, five star hotels, enterprises, education institutes, religious places, etc. are making it necessary to instal video servrveillance. And it is not Axis only, most of the compaies dealing in surveillance solutions find it great opportunity in the Indian market but the benefit of Axis is that it is one of the biggest process driven companies across the world. They can invest on creating awareness about the security solutions today.

Along with awareness, they can also afford to create pool in the market place by launching various attractive marketing programmes, which other companies may not do.

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SECURITY CORNER

ESET

“PLANS TO BE THE TOP ANTI-VIRUS BRAND IN INDIA” Highly popular brand in student community, ESET’s primary focus is to give better anti-virus.

Secondly, it wants to be present in each–and-every corner of India to make the brand much stronger.

E

SET has started operations in India about three years back but approximately one year back, the company has started to go to the channels market with a lot of marketing activities and promotional activities. As per Gartner report for 2010, ESET was growth - wise biggest anti-virus brand across the globe. It was probably same in India also. The way ESET has started doing the promotional and marketing activities; the company thinks it is going to be on the top of anti-virus brands in India.

Pankaj Jain, Director of ESET India (ESS Distribution Pvt. Ltd.) believes that it’s a bit late to come in India as already many players have established their business here – ‘but it is better late than never’.

Anti-Virus market started picking-up in India from probably 1997-98. Dr. Solomon antivirus and other anti-virus used to be there. Pankaj says, “We started operation in India in 2007. Still there are lots of scopes for the new entrances as India is a very big market. Moreover, piracy level is coming down. Ten years back the ratio was about 80% pirated and the 20% licenced software. Now I would say it’s probably 50-50. So scope is there. I estimate antivirus market approximately INR 10, 000 crores per year. Right now our primary focus is on SME segment. We are aiming to capture 10 per cent market share within next couple of years, while today our installation base share is 4 percent in India, this figure includes pirated licenses though.”

Pankaj believes that Indian customers are looking for the better anti-virus which does not require any kind of technical support. And they can install and use it easily without any assistance.

That’s what ESET offers to them. Moreover it is a late entry but it is not the slow thing.

“ESET business in India has grown double last year and it continues growing. Moreover, in India

EUGENIA ZABASHTAN, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR, ESET INDIA

ESET have been registering the highest growth across the globe for consecutive two years. Our marketing strategy an the channel partner’s policies are quite agressive, so I believe that we would be there in main lead in next couple of years”, Pankaj Jain adds.

To highlight the company’s strength Pankaj states that ESET has received the most “Advanced+” awards in proactive tests from AVComparatives of all Antivirus vendors. On the top of that, ESET NOD32 Antivirus has achieved the highest number of prestigious Virus Bulletin VB100 Awards. Recently ESET received its 70th VB100 Award from Virus Bulletin, an indepen-

“MOST OF THE VENDORS ARE TRYING TO LAUNCH VERY CHEAP PRODUCTS AND THEY ARE NOT THAT MUCH CONCERNED ABOUT PRODUCTS’ QUALITY AND FEATURES.”

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dent testing antivirus authority, which makes ESET NOD32 Antivirus the world’s record holder of VB100 Awards of all security solution vendors. . So technology wise, ESET is far superior to its competitors. As far as the acceptability of the new technology and new features are concern ESET is very open and very aggressive in that.

The company recently launched new version - 5.0, which has got lots-of new features like scaning and blocking U SB flash drives, memory cards and CDs/DVDs, parental control and improved anti-spam.

As compared to other already available products with the same feature Pankaj clarifies that ESET’s primary focus is to give better antimalware protection. Ultimately in 99% cases anti-virus product is being used by end-customers, and probably only one per uses other features. So

ESET primary focus is to provide the best antivirus product. The rest of the things provide an additional level of protection and they will keep on increasing as per the market demand or competitor’s activity.

Right now ESET has small team of 14 people.

But the company would like to expand the manpower and next calendar year ESET has huge plan to increase the manpower in field of Marketing, Support, Pre-Sales technical support and Sales.

Also the company has more than 120 channel partners across India. These companies are associated with ESET from last three to four years. Now the company is increasing the channel presence in India by appointing new regional distributors, launching channel schemes and expanding operations to B, C & D class cities. It has presence in every state of India.

PANKAJ JAIN, DIRECTOR OF ESET INDIA (ESS DISTRIBUTION PVT. LTD.)

“RIGHT NOW OUR PRIMARY FOCUS IS ON SME SEGMENT. WE ARE AIMING TO CAPTURE 10 PER CENT MARKET SHARE WITHIN NEXT COUPLE OF YEARS”

ESET sales products in two separate models, paper licence primarily for enterprise, government and educational segments and retail boxes for end-consumers. In retail boxes segment the company has regional distributors and a sizable number of dealers and resellers. In case of paper license, ESET diretly deals with channel partners and service providers who then supply the products to the end-customers. Thus,100 percent of ESET business is B to Be, not B to C business as all the sales and license renewals are executed through channel.

Commenting on company’s Indian strategy, Eugenia Zabashtan, Business Development

SECURITY CORNER

Director, ESET India, “We see that India has a huge market. And we need to do everything possible to develop this market. From my side India is the most growing market, however it is quite complicated, first of all because of large number of antivirus vendors and because of geographic peculiarities. We need to be there in each and every corner of India.”

She added, “My personal opinion regarding Indian market is that most of the vendors are trying to launch very cheap products and they are not that much concerned about products’ quality and features. Our strategy is quite different. We are trying first of all to protect our customers.

Indian market is quite different because some customers want to get cheap or free products and some customers are ready to invest in decent and well-priced products. ESET is working on increasing the brand-awareness among users, at the same time we are rapidly growing our partners’ network to deliver our products to more and more customers.”

Providing details about partner programs and company strategies, Pankaj says, “We are increasing field team - pre-sales technical and support team day by day. Moreover,every month we are participating in various events, exhibitions,seminars, organizing road shows and even social campaigns. As a result, are getting more partners enquiries. WE are quite aggressive in the field of online promotion, we achieved great results in social media marketing and SEO. So all these efforts help to get more-and-more enquires from the end customers as well as from the channel partners.”

“We have many enterprise customers, including government and educational organizations like Delhi Public School, DRDO, Victoria Institution, National Institute Of Science Education And Research in Bhubaneswar, and many others. These customers are using ESET for last 3-4 years, and I’m quite sure that we have the highest renewal ratio in industry, it is 85 percent. ESET is a popular brand in student community. Probably that could be a reason that we are getting more order from the education sector,” further added Pankaj.

Finally…

The company has approximately US$ 250 million business worldwide and holds first position in the markets of Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Greece, Turkey, and in Asia – in Hong Kong and Thailand and second position in Russia, Spain, Israel, third position in China.

ESET has good experience in beating competition in developing markets, for example Russia and CIS, and this will surely help them to create good market in India.

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PRODUCT

REVIEW

KINGSTON DATA TRAVELLER 6000

ECS MOTHERBOARD A75F-M

THE 8GB KINGSTON Data Traveller 6000 is a 100% secured drive owing to its partition of Linux based software. Primary

BY MANAS RANJAN / SATYA SAGAR SINHA info@smechannels.com

data is unreadable. Through the software, one can use the data area with a user interface

ECS - MOTHERBOARD - A75F-M in AMD M1 socket DDR3 is a combination of AMD’s platform and A75 chipset. A75F-M provides dual-channel DDR3 DIMM slot carrying up to 64GB of DDR3 1866 memory. It supports UVD3.0, DirectX 11 3D Graphic, PCI Express 2.0, SATA 6 Gb/s and natively USB3.0.

The new generation of AMD APUs combining the CPU with the GPU in a single- chip design, features stutterfree HD video play back, DirectX 11-capable graphics.

DirectX11 features the latest technologies of Compute Shades, Direct 2D, Virtual 3D, Multithreaded Rednering and Tessellation for crating rich worlds, realistic characters and more fluid game play.

The M.I.B III brings the same convenience interface of over clocking as M.I.B. II, it also comes with advance range of frequency tuning for system performance and superior gaming capability.

ECS GUI UEFI BIOS is a convenient tool for tweaking BIOS in Graphical Interface. Users can select functions in BIOS with mouse and keyboard. The user-friendly interface with ECS designer wallpaper radically brings user convenience and easy to use experience.

Direct X 11 features the latest technologies of compute shades, direct 2D, Multithreaded Rendering and tessellation for create rich worlds, realistic characters. The exceptionally increased interconnected bit rate from 2.5GT/s up to 5.0GT/s would effectively eliminates the bottleneck of the system performance and brings the most terrific computing experience from the present to the future. It also delivers upto a 4X increase in graphics and 2x I/O bandwidth for smooth multimedia performance doubles the transfer speed of SATA 3G, running at speed up to 6.0Gb/s and can connect with any other SATA 3.0Gb/s and 1.5 Gb/s devices for backward compatibility. It also supports RAID 0 to Raid 10. It provides the users performance and protection.

FEATURES n CPU: Socket FM1 for AMD A series/

E Series/Athlon Quard-core/Athlon Dual-core/Sempron Dual-core processors n MEMORY: Dual-channel DDR3

memory architecture, 4 x 240-pin DDR3 DIMM socket support up to 64GB, per one DIMM support 16GB, Support Dual-channel DDR3 1333/1600/1866 memory architecture n 1 x PCI Express x1 slot n 2 x PCI slots n STORAGE: Support by AMD A75, 6 x

Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s devices, RAID0, RAID1, RAID10 configuration n AUDIO: Realtek ALC892 8 channel+S/

PDIF, Compliant with HD audio specification, INTERNAL I/O CONNECTORS & HEADERS, 1 x 24-pin ATX Power Supply connector

PRICE Rs 5100

WARRANTY

password. The system is very secure and immune from virus and also crass proof. It is compatible with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS, etc. It comes with inbuilt software for formatting otherwise you cannot format the drive. Another feature is that you cannot pull it to eject, you need to log out it. The safely removal software is inbuilt into it. If the system has virus, the inbuilt software allows to browse from the drive itself. There is no chance of data being misplaced. Further, Kingston Data Traveller 6000 offers data copy speed up to 2.0MHz. It has 256 bits data encryption facility. The first primary drive is right protected so it cannot be formatted. That is the reason this

3 years

Data Traveller is little bulky. Overall the drive is

CONTACT

most secure drive for the mobile workers who

Joyce Wu, Elitegroup Computer Systems Co., LTD, Global Channel Marketing, Tel: 886-2-2162-1177 Ext#26310, Email: joyce.cl.wu@ecs.com.tw

often carry that from one place to other using

OVERALL RATING

mobile devices.

n Price: Rs. 8500, Warranty: 5 years Contact: Sales_india@kingston.com Tel: 022 42230300

48 SME CHANNELS JANUARY 2012

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NEW ARRIVALS

PRODUCT

IOMEGA

IOMEGA STORCENTER IX2 NETWORK STORAGE

WESTERN DIGITAL

WD TV LIVE WIRELESS MEDIA PLAYER WESTERN DIGITAL’S next generation WD TV Live streaming media player (WDBGXT0000NBK-SESN) is an easy to use Wi-Fi enabled media player.

WD TV Live features newest intuitive user interface that delivers the latest hit movies, TV shows, music and the best of Internet content from companies like Vimeo, Playjam, Deezer, TuneIn, SnagFlims, Comedy Time, and Watch Mojo YouTube, Facebook directly to your TV in Full-HD 1080p resolution. The new streaming media player easily connects to the Internet wirelessly or through an Ethernet connection, with the high performance 802.11n wireless connectivity supporting even the most demanding high definition video applications.

In addition to premium Internet content, WD TV Live allows users to easily enjoy personal media such as photos, video and music on their home entertainment systems by supporting a wide range of file formats for streaming content from any connected USB drive, digital camcorder or camera, network drive such as the My Book Live personal cloud storage, and any networked PC or Mac computer in the home. n Price: INR7,900/-, Warranty: 1 year on-site limited warranty Contact: Kinny Nayar, WD, 207, Ansal tower, 38 Nehru Place, New Delhi110019 Tel: 011-47156700, Email: kinny.nayaar@wd.com

THE NEW IOMEGA StorCenter ix2 Network Storage is an advanced two-bay desktop network storage device available in multiple configurations and designed specifically for content sharing and data protection as well as cloud computing and video surveillance applications at small businesses, work groups, remote offices and distributed enterprises.

Based on enterprise-class EMC storage technology, the new Iomega StorCenter ix2 provides up to 6TB* of network storage for small and medium-sized business networks and distributed or remote locations utilizing PC, Mac and Linux computers. The new StorCenter ix2 encompasses many advanced business capabilities usually not available to smaller organizations, including out-of-the-box video surveillance capabilities for up to five IP camera installations. Users can also utilize their choice of cloud backup capability with Mozy, Amazon S3 and EMC Atmosenabled cloud backup services offered by service providers, as well as Iomega’s revolutionary Personal Cloud technology featuring unparalleled simplicity and versatility for data sharing and protection without any monthly fees or service costs. n Price: Starts at INR12,000 for the diskless model Warranty: Three-year limited warranty Contact: Iomega Corporation, Tel: 1800-180-2237, Email: IndiaSales@ iomega.com

MATRIX

MATRIX EON141 TRADING TURRET MATRIX EON141, the Digital Trading Terminal specifically designed for traders, aims to increase their productivity and efficiency during critical business hours. EON141 is the slim-line and rugged trading turret with Push-to-Mute handsets targeted to small-medium sized trading firms.

Combined with Matrix’s ETERNITY ME range of IP-PBXs, EON141 helps traders to streamline with back office operations without the need of keeping multiple telephones. Traders will be offered the comprehensive range of call handling options for incoming calls, conferencing capability and outgoing call routing through the cost effective trunk. It offers 4 pages with 84 speed dial keys per page along with call status indication to reach desired banker or investor in no time.

In addition, it offers dedicated keys for pagination, trader login, voice mail and call logs along with additional user programmable keys and call control keys. n Price: 63,000/-, Warranty: 1 Year Contact: Ruchir Talati, MATRIX COMSEC, 394-GIDC, Makarpura, Vadodara-390 010, India, Tel: +91 265 2630555 email: Ruchir.Talati@MatrixComSec.com

SME CHANNELS 49 JANUARY 2012

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TREND SETTER

FUJITSU

BECOMING

INTELLIGENTL Y ON INDIAN

FOCUSED MARKET

Most of the Japanese companies present in India more or less are growing on a steady pace. In the recent past these companies have faced a lot of natural calamities but they have emerged like phoenix because of their tenacity.

MARK WILSON - SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, INDIA REGION, FUJITSU INDIA PVT. LTD.

BY NEIL D’SOUZA info@smechannels.com

L

ike most of the Japanese companies, Fujitsu is also fundamentally strong with huge technology readiness at its backyard. In addition to this, Fujitsu India Pvt. Ltd., being driven from European side of management, the company is different from rest of Japanese companies. It is really very aggressive on the Indian soil. At a time when the market is showing signs of tiredness, Fujitsu India is stepping on the gas. It is extremely process driven like other Japanese companies but at the same time flexible enough to adapt to the changing situation.

Updating about the current state of the situation Mark Wilson - Senior Vice President, India region, Fujitsu India Pvt. Ltd., says, “For the last couple of years, when Fujitsu India has moved under Fujitsu Technology Solutions umbrella, we have been focusing on enterprise type solution including data center offering and parallel to that we have built back office infrastructure to support and service the customers’ mission critical solutions. So we have been traditionally very strong in enterprise market creation but probably little bit weak in developing channel initiatives.”

Maximum of its growth has come from enterprise space. And Fujitsu has traditionally focused on different sectors of the market and has not gone after certain unique vertical strategy but they have chosen certain marketing activities by creating some stronger value proposition in whether it is about some software- based technology come out of Japan or creating technology differentiation with in the country. This has actually given them a good customer base in India. And their USP is quality differentiation. The market is generally speaking about how Fujitsu is highly engineered company developing well designed products. As per Mark,

every customer they meet in India, generally talks about the quality of the products and as far as the channel is concerned, they have a strong partner base. They obviously had to partner with the traditional IT reseller in the market. But at the beginning they suspected Fujitsu’s quality products and therefore the company had faced with a difficult time in convincing them. Today, these partners have become very loyal to Fujitsu. Secondly, the company has also tier-2 partners’ base who are giving very good traction in the market. Going forward, Fujitsu will build its strategy on 3-4 key strategic areas. And one of these four pillars is Channel.

He adds, “We need the channel to be effective in India. We need to make sure that the distribution model is working effectively. We have got traditional stock and sell model working with the right product for the right place. We are having consistent business and we need to bring more consistency. The company has channel programmes to make sure that Partners are on board.”

Fujitsu has a programme called SELECT which traditionally brings all partners on board. There are certain to take the partners under SELECT or SELECT Expert depending upon what product he sells. They have different certification level as well, which the channel has to go through to achieve ratings or they need to have certain amount of resources on board to achieve the certification.

This has actually helped Fujitsu to have the quality of partners and it makes sure that the customers get optimum satisfaction at the end of the day.

“Personally for me in India, the customer picks up phone and asks us first for solutions and recommendations. That is what I think is the key driver. Instead of market share numbers, customers are the key influencer to Fujitsu’s success. For

“I THINK THE TESTAMENT OF OUR CUSTOMERS’ ACCEPTANCE OF THIS PHILOSOPHY – THE FUJITSU WAY - IS VERY WELL RECEIVED IN THE MARKET PLACE.” example rather than selling them thousands of entry-level servers, I would like to have intense discussion about their strategic intent and road map as to what they do for business agility and how we can bring value to them,” Mark adds. “I think that is in the DNA of Fujitsu.

Fujitsu as an organization believes, if they have a customer they are ready to walk a mile with that customer whether they are in good time or bad time. They put the customer first at every situation that they talk about. He maintains, “I think the testament of our customers’ acceptance of this philosophy – ‘the Fujitsu way’ -is very well received in the market place.”

Finally…

India is a large consumer market and it is the biggest growth engine for most of the enterprises but Fujitsu does not target this segment. However, Fujitsu believes that there is a strong pool for servers in the space of SoHo, SMB, Mid and the Corporate market and therefore they are create different strategies for different markets to address the market aggressively.

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RNI No.: DEL ENG / 2010 / 3192

Data of Posting: 22 & 23 of Every Month

Postal Reg. No.: DL-SW-1/4145/10-12

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